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THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


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Just in time ! 

A dead shot, taken from very near. 





THE TUSK-HUNTERS 



By 

FRANCIS ROLT-WHEELER 

Author of “ U. S. Service Series ” 


ILLUSTRATED 




BOSTON 

LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO. 













Copyright, 1927, 

By Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co. 


All Rights Reserved 


The Tusk-Hunters 



Printed in U. S A. 

Wotwoofc press 
BERWICK & SMITH CO. 
Norwood, Mass. 


MAY-6'21 

® Cl A97S433 






FOREWORD 


In a book where so much courtesy has been 
shown by Museum officials, naturalists, famous 
hunters, and writers, it is difficult to discriminate, 
but the Author takes this opportunity to express 
his obligation to the authors of the following books: 
“ The Mammoth and Mammoth-Hunting,” by Bas¬ 
sett Digby; “Animal Life in Africa,” by Major J. 
Stevenson-Hamilton; “ The African Elephant and 
its Hunters,” by Denis D. Lyell; “ The Elephant,” 
by Agnes Herbert; and “ A Hunter’s Wanderings in 
Africa,” by F. C. Selous. The Author is indebted, 
also, to the Colonial Office and to “ The Elephant 
God,” by Gordon Casserly, for matters dealing with 
the Indian elephant. 


3 





PREFACE 


The lure of the wild will call to men so long as 
red blood flows in human veins, whether that call 
come from the frozen tundra of Siberia or the swel¬ 
tering jungle of Equatorial Africa. The thrill of 
big-game hunting will ever appeal to adventurous 
natures, as it has since the long-ago days when 
Prehistoric Man battled for his livelihood and his 
life with flint-tipped weapons, as it does still, with 
all the marvellous resources of modern invention. 

In later days, a deeper spell has been given both 
to the “ call of the wild ” and to big-game hunting, 
in the desire to learn the inmost secrets of the lives 
of animals, a spell which is shared by the scientific 
naturalist and the photographer alike. The wonder 
and the splendor of wild life is felt in a tenfold 
greater sense than it ever was before, for men have 
begun to realize that knowledge is greater than 
trophies, and that the worth of an animal is greater 
than the value of its hide or its tusks. 

To try to give some measure of the life of the 
Elephant, how he came to be, how he lived and 
lives, the part that he plays in the semi-explored 
wilds, and to arouse a deeper appreciation of that 
mighty Lord of the Forest is the aim and purpose of 

The Authoh. 


5 







CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I 


A Siberian Wizard - 

CHAPTER II 

* 


13 

A Charging Mammoth - 

CHAPTER III 

m 


29 

Fossil Ivory - 

CHAPTER IV 

* 

■* 

46 

A Hairy Monster - 

CHAPTER V 

• 


62 

A Splendid Find - 

CHAPTER VI 

‘ 

‘ 

78 

An Arctic Blizzard - 

CHAPTER VII 

' 


97 

A Dangerous Rescue - 

CHAPTER VIII 

* 

* 

122 

Capturing Elephants - 

CHAPTER IX 

m 

‘ 

143 

A Trunked Deity - 

CHAPTER X 

m 


162 

Gored to Death - 

7 

- 

- 

182 


8 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER XI 

Into the Jungle - 

- 

- 203 

CHAPTER XII 
Amidst a Heed - 


- 224 

CHAPTER XIII 

A Rhinoceros Fight - 

— 

- 242 

CHAPTER XIY 
Facing a Lion - 


- 257 

CHAPTER XY 
Shooting the Outlaw - 


- 274 

CHAPTER XYI 

The Place of Peace - 


- 294 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


Just in Time!. Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

Sorting some Big Tusks.28 

Siberian Mammoth-Hunters .... 28 

The Beresovka Mammoth at an Early Stage 

of Excavation.29 

The Beresovka Mammoth .... 29 

The Mammoth.42 

An Elephant Road in Open Country . . 43 

An Elephant Road in Dense Jungle . . 43 

Moeritherium.66 

Palaeomastodon.67 

Tetralobedon.70 

Dinotherium.71 

An Elephant Kraal in India .... 148 

Indian Elephants Leaving the Water . . 149 

The Mahout Directs Everything . . .152 

Elephant Stacking Timber . . . .153 

Strength, Intelligence, Fidelity . . . 162 

Elephant Herd Crossing the Zambesi River . 163 

Elephant Farm in the Belgian Congo . . 202 

Elephant-Trackers from the Belgian Congo . 203 

9 





10 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


Herd of Old Hippopotamuses .... 208 

Immature Hippopotamuses .... 208 

Hippopotamuses at Sunset .... 208 

Square-Mouthed Rhinoceros .... 209 

A Sniff of the Man-Smell .... 209 

Rhinoceros Charging.209 

Forced to Swerve.209 

A Massive Bull Elephant .... 226 

Vital Shots for an Elephant .... 227 

A Bull Elephant’s Spoor.227 

An African Elephant Pushing through the 

Jungle.234 

Trees Broken by an Elephant .... 235 

A Rhinoceros Attacking an Elephant . . 252 

Square-Mouthed Rhinoceros in Shallow 

Stream.253 

Chief Agbashan of Oban.256 

With the Trophies of the Chase . . . 257 

African Lion and Lioness .... 304 

Going to the “ Place of Peace ” . . . 305 






THE TUSK-HUNTERS 



The Tusk-Hunters 


CHAPTER I 

A SIBERIAN WIZARD 

“ A living mammoth! Impossible! ” 

“ Well, that’s what this old monkey-faced witch¬ 
doctor says, anyway. Why not? Wouldn’t it be 
a find, though! ” 

“ But the mere idea is absurd, Spencer! The race 
of mammoths is absolutely extinct. There has not 
been a specimen alive, these thirty thousand years 
and more! ” 

“ Perhaps, but you can’t tell what’s going to hap¬ 
pen in these outlandish parts, Father. We’re cer¬ 
tainly the first scientific folk who ever crossed this 
part of the Siberian tundra, at least, according to 
your detailed map.” 

“ I am glad to know that you consider yourself 
a scientist, Son,” “ Hunter ” Wolland rejoined, look¬ 
ing at the boy with some amusement, and using a 
professorial tone, “ but your credulity does not go 
far to support your claim. There could not pos- 

13 


14 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


sibly remain an isolated specimen of the mammoth, 
still living. In order that the species should have 
been perpetuated, a whole herd, at least, must have 
survived all those thousands of years. It is not to 
be admitted that all Siberian explorers, since the 
beginning of historic times, should have failed to 
hear of any such.” 

“ Perhaps this one is a sort of Methuselah mam¬ 
moth! ” 

“ I wish you would learn to be serious, Spencer! 
Tell me, just exactly, what does this shaman say? ” 

“ He says he knows where there’s a living mam¬ 
moth. Those are his very words.” 

“ Get him to explain himself, if you can. Oh, 
that I could understand the Tungus language, or 
Yakut, or even Russian! ” 

The boy turned again to the Yakut guide and re¬ 
commenced his roundabout efforts to probe the mys¬ 
tery. That there was a real mystery seemed certain, 
for his father had told him that, while the Tunguses 
have the gift of recounting marvellous stories, they 
have the reputation of being superlatively honest 
and they do not lie—at least, not those who live on 
the shores of the Arctic Ocean and are not yet 
“ civilized.” However difficult it might be to ex¬ 
tract the truth which was contained in this appar- 



A SIBERIAN WIZARD 15 

ently fantastic tale of a “ living mammoth,” as¬ 
suredly there must be some grounds for it. 

How to secure the precise information was a prob¬ 
lem. The Yakut guide understood but very few 
words of the Tungus language—a Ural-Altaic tongue 
having a close relation to old Japanese—and his own 
knowledge of Russian was confined to what he had 
picked up on the streets of Yakutsk. The Tungus 
shaman knew little of the Yakut language—which is 
a mixture of ancient Turkish and Northern Mon¬ 
golian—and he knew no Russian at all. 

Spencer’s knowledge of Russian was not very pro¬ 
found, by no means so complete as he wanted his 
father to believe it to be, and this added still another 
element of uncertainty in any translation. He had 
only chanced to learn Russian from the fact that 
his high school chum, in Duluth, was the son of a 
wealthy Russian nobleman, forced into exile by the 
Bolshevist Revolution. Spencer had spent two 
summers with his chum, living in a home where 
Russian was currently spoken. 

It was this very knowledge of Russian which had 
induced Professor Wolland or “ The Hunter,” as he 
was more generally known, to take his son on this 
" mammoth-hunting ” expedition into Eastern Si¬ 
beria, financed by a group of capitalists interested in 





16 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


the Detroit Museum. As matters turned out, Spen¬ 
cer’s presence proved to be of the highest value, for 
the two Russian guides, who had been engaged at 
Tomsk, had been seized and held as political 
prisoners by the Bolshevist authorities at Ya¬ 
kutsk. 

This misadventure had almost caused “ Hunter ” 
Wolland to abandon the expedition, for one of these 
guides was an old ivory-trader with a thorough 
knowledge of the tribes of Northeastern Siberia 
and the Arctic Coast. Spencer was wild with disap¬ 
pointment, and his urgent declarations that he 
could serve as interpreter had played a part in his 
father’s determination to pursue the quest. The 
news that a Yakut guide, who knew a little Rus¬ 
sian, could be found at Sigansk, a couple of hundred 
miles down the Lena River, made Spencer’s part 
possible. 

Such Russian as Spencer had learned from his 
chum—and his chum’s sister—was of little use to 
him, here, where only the highest authorities spoke 
pure Russian. But the boy had a natural gift for 
languages, and, realizing that this was the only way 
in which he could be of use to his father, he had 
spent every minute of the seemingly interminable 
voyage along the Lena in mastering Yakut. The 


A SIBERIAN WIZARD 17 

language was one of incredible difficulty, but 
youth and energy, together, can accomplish much. 
Even so, being forced to use two intermediaries, 
The Hunter found that the securing of accurate in¬ 
formation was a tedious and inaccurate process. 

To make this particular conversation still worse, 
the smell in the shaman’s hut was one which white 
men could hardly endure. Widely as The Hunter 
had travelled, inured as he was to the manifold dis¬ 
comforts of scientific expeditions into unknown 
parts, experienced elephant-hunter though he had 
been in his youth, he had never been able wholly 
to overcome his repulsion to the malodorous. The 
atmosphere of the Tungus shaman’s hut was a fear¬ 
some compound of unholy smells, and only by great 
self-control could the Americans keep from getting 
“ sea-sick.” Even the Yakut was beginning to feel 
squeamish, and a Yakut can live in the vilest kind 
of atmosphere. 

“Get him to come outside, to talk! ” burst out 
The Hunter, impatiently. “ At least, we should 
have a chance to breathe!” 

“ I have tried. He won’t; just positively won’t. 
According to what Ivan says, he declares that it’s 
after the full moon, and that a shaman mustn’t put 
his foot outside the door of his hut while the moon 


18 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


is waning. It doesn’t seem to have any sense, but 
that’s what he says.” 

The Hunter, who had spent many years as a 
Natural History Museum curator, nodded under¬ 
standing. 

“ That’s quite possible. All shamans are sup¬ 
posed to be more or less moon-struck.” 

“Let me try again! We don’t want to have to 
wait here for nearly two weeks, do we? We’ll have 
to stand the smell. After all, how can he help 
smelling? He hasn’t washed since he was born, 
and he hasn’t changed his clothes since he grew up. 
You told me yourself, Father, that was the custom 
of the Tungus who have adopted Eskimo habits.” 

The boy turned to the guide. 

“ Ask him when it was that he last saw the mam¬ 
moth, Ivan.” 

“ It was one night, last winter, Excellency.” 

“ In the dark, eh? Does he mean he dreamt it? ” 

“No, Excellency. Pardon, but he says you do 
not understand.” 

“ He’s quite right; I don’t! ” 

“ It is thus he says, Excellency. The mammoth 
is not always alive. It comes alive only at night¬ 
time and during certain phases of the moon. The 
rest of the time it is in a non-breathing sleep-” 



A SIBERIAN WIZARD 


19 


Spencer interrupted. 

“ Wait a minute, Ivan! ” 

He turned to his father: 

“ I don’t know what he means by a ‘ non-breath¬ 
ing sleep.’ Our word ‘ trance ’ doesn’t seem to fit. 
Say, Father, this couldn’t be a case of suspended 
animation, could it?” 

“ For thirty thousand years? Do show some 
sense, Spencer! ” 

“ Well, there’s the story of toads found im¬ 
prisoned in rocks nobody knows how many thou¬ 
sands of years ago, and seeds from the Pyramids of 
Egypt have germinated and grown, too! ” 

The Hunter answered these “ scientific ” argu¬ 
ments with a look of withering professorial scorn. 

The guide and the shaman went on palavering, 
and the boy put in explanations to his father from 
the few words he could catch. 

“ The old medicine-man seems serious enough 
about it. He says that two men of his tribe have 
been hurt by the mammoth’s tusks. He says he 
can bring you the men, to prove it. They were 
chased by the mammoth. It happened a good way 
from here, in a river valley. He declares that the 
mammoth wanders up and down that valley, by 
night.” 


20 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


“ Will he take us to the place? ” queried The 
Hunter. 

Spencer put the question. 

“ Not for a million roubles! ” 

“ Never mind the roubles. They have little 
chance to use money here. Offer him a gun.” 

In his earlier travels, as an elephant-hunter in 
Africa, and, later, as the head of several scientific 
collecting expeditions, The Hunter had learned that 
nothing tempts a savage or a barbarian so much as 
a modern gun. 

“ He says he has all the guns he wants. Every 
hunter in his tribe has a gun.” 

“ The remnants of the Red Army and White 
Army campaigns in Siberia, I suppose. How about 
ammunition? ” 

This word aroused the shaman’s interest. It was 
quite true that many Tunguses and most of the 
Yakuts had guns—since the World War nothing is 
commoner in Modem Siberia than a rusty and ill- 
tended rifle—but none of them had ammunition. 
A rifle, without any cartridges, may be a sign of 
affluence and authority, but it is not a very valuable 
weapon to the hunter. 

Even with this bribe, the shaman seemed unwill¬ 
ing. 



A SIBERIAN WIZARD 21 

“ He says he’s afraid the mammoth will come and 
haunt him.” 

“Haunt him! Then it’s a ghost-mammoth!” 
exclaimed the boy’s father. “ Is this one of these 
tales of imaginary creatures that the Tungus chat¬ 
terboxes are so fond of? The mammoth is one of 
their principal devils, so I have heard.” 

“ No,” explained the boy, after some more talk. 
“ He declares that it’s a real sure-enough animal. 
He calls it a ‘ giant underground rat,’ I don’t know 
why. By daylight, so he says, the beast is quiet, 
but no one dares to go near the place because other 
1 giant underground rats ’ may be burrowing be¬ 
neath the surface and setting the whole world 
atremble; by night, according to his account, it 
roams around, feeding, and then the natives are 
more scared, still. It’s surely the weirdest story I 
ever heard! ” 

The Hunter-Professor understood, at once, the 
shaman’s reference to a “ giant rat,” but he was 
much too anxious to get out of the foul-smelling 
hut to discuss the matter with Spencer, there. Yet 
it was imperative to secure the information. Al¬ 
ready they had been five weeks on the voyage 
through Siberia, and time was scant. This was 
their first clue. 


22 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


“Try to bully him into telling us something 
worth while! ” 

On Spencer’s orders, the Yakut guide became in¬ 
sistent, authoritative, and angry. He threatened 
the shaman with every kind of punishment he could 
think of, including tortures formerly used in Si¬ 
berian prisons, of which the American boy had 
never heard. The shaman looked terrified at the 
Yakut’s threats, but his fear of the mammoth was 
greater than his fear of the knout, of the nail- 
studded head-cord, or of the two fish-hooks thrust 
through the tongue and either cheek—a pleasant 
custom taken from the Koriak tribes, which made 
eating and drinking an agony. The guide added a 
few Chinese tortures, for good measure. All were 
unavailing. 

“It’s no go, Father; we can’t move him. And 
if you’d only heard what Ivan threatened! ” 

“ If he were not so old, I would seize him and 
make him come, by force! ” stormed The Hunter, 
completely losing his poise in his eagerness. 

The shaman actually smiled. 

“ He says, Excellency,” translated the guide, 
“ that if you lay a finger on him, either you will 
die immediately, or within a few days, certainly be¬ 
fore the next new moon. I, Excellency, think that 


A SIBERIAN WIZARD 


23 


this is true. I have heard so, of the shamans, many 
times before.” 

“ We’ll have to find those two natives he was 
talking about then,” said Spencer. 

“ At least,” said his father, “ let us get a breath 
of fresh air. I shall collapse, if we don’t.” 

He had reached the door of the low hut, when 
the shaman spoke, in a louder voice. The tone 
seemed more conciliatory. 

“ What does he say, Spencer? ” 

“ So far as I can make out, he offers to show us 
the mammoth, for five times twenty cartridges.” 

“ But that’s what we’ve been asking him to do 
for the last half-hour and more. That’s all I want! 
Let him come right along! ” 

The boy shook his head. 

“ I don’t think he means that he’ll come with us, 
himself” 

“No! What then?” 

“ Only that he’ll show us the way.” 

“ That’s something. Let him come. The sooner 
we start, the better.” 

On this being translated to him, Ivan made a 
resolute protest. 

“You do not understand, Excellency. He will 
show you the way, but he will not leave his hut 


24 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

until after the new moon. He will show you the 
way, here, now.” 

“ You mean he will tell us? ” queried Spencer. 

“ No, Excellency. He will show it so that you 
can see the way with your own eyes. He will show 
you the mammoth, alive, too! ” 

“ What on earth does that mean? ” 

A long explanation, with much mutual cross¬ 
purpose, followed, but, at last, the boy grasped the 
shaman’s plan. 

“ I’ve got it, Father! I see what he means. He’s 
going to show us the way, by magic.” 

“ Magic? ” 

“ ‘ On a wall of smoke ’ is a literal translation. It 
seems to be some kind of sorcery, so far as I can 
make out from what Ivan says.” 

“ Hunter ” Wolland calmed down at this, so far 
as he could remain calm in that atmosphere of 
smells. He knew that the shamans or medicine¬ 
men of the Tungus are reputed to possess magical 
powers unapproached by those of any other race, 
save, perhaps, the Eskimo. 

Entirely aside from his quest for a well-preserved 
mammoth for the Detroit Museum—his principal 
reason for coming to Siberia—he was making care¬ 
ful ethnological studies throughout the journey. 


A SIBERIAN WIZARD 


25 


Here was a most unusual opportunity to see a 
Tungus shaman at work. Certainly, in the whole 
history of mammoth-finding, not one explorer had 
been favored with the aid of witchcraft. 

“ Very good. Tell him that I will give the car¬ 
tridges. When is this performance to begin? ” 

“ Soon, Excellency; very soon.” 

“ IT get a breath of fresh air, first. Arrange the 
affair as best you can, Son, and then follow me. I 
can’t stand this any longer.” 

Spencer would have liked to stay in the hut, to 
watch the shaman begin his preparations, but the 
odor drove him out, too. 

He found his father lying prone on the muddy 
ground outside the “ yurt ” or Tungus hut, which, 
with its out-tilted walls, looks like a square loaf of 
bread that has been thoroughly rolled in the dirt. 
The Hunter had been suddenly and violently ill; 
the change from the fetid atmosphere of the in¬ 
terior to the fresh air, outside, had been too sudden. 

Spencer did his best to resist his father’s example, 
but the atrocious smell in the hut had turned his 
stomach, likewise, and he was not long in following 
suit. The fresh air, which had produced the attack, 
was a restorative, none the less, and, half an hour 
afterwards, both felt a little better. Yet they were 


26 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


still pale and nauseated when the Yakut guide 
came and called them, stating that everything was 
ready. 

“ Great Cats! We’ve got to go into that smell 
and get sick all over again, I suppose! ” the boy 
said, making a wry face. 

“ Well, I want to see that ‘ giant underground 
rat’ of his, smell or no smell.” 

“ Oh, yes; what did he mean by that? Do you 
know, Father? ” 

“ Certainly. It is a Chinese belief. Some Chinese 
traders, at Kiakhta, told Klaproth, the famous 
Orientalist, when he was a member of Count Golov¬ 
kin’s embassy to China, that some ivory drinking- 
cups, which he had observed, were made from 4 the 
tusks of the giant rat, Tien-Shu. It is a creature 
which dislikes the light and lives in dark holes, near 
the Polar Seas. It comes seldom to the surface and 
then only during the dark nights. Its flesh is cool¬ 
ing and wholesome to eat.’ ” 

“ What an idea! ” 

“ Some of the Chinese writers go even farther. 
They declare that earthquakes are produced by a 
whole drove of these monstrous ‘ giant rats,’ bur¬ 
rowing, like moles, under the soil.” 

“ Where did they get such a notion? ” 


A SIBERIAN WIZARD 27 

“ From the Ostiaks, possibly. John Bernard 
Muller, a Swedish officer who was sent as a prisoner 
of war to Siberia, reported that the natives sup¬ 
posed the mammoth tusks to be ‘ the Horns of a 
live huge Beast, which lives in Morasses and subter¬ 
ranean Caves, subsisting by the Mud and working 
itself by the Help of its Horns through the Mire 
and Earth, but when it chances to meet Sandy 
Ground, the Sands rowl after it so close that, 
by reason of its unwieldiness, it cannot turn itself 
again, it sticks fast at last and perishes.’ ” 

“ What nonsense! ” 

“ How else would a Siberian native, who had 
never seen an elephant or the picture of an ele¬ 
phant, account for the sudden discovery of cold- 
storage flesh-and-blood mammoths, being washed 
free, by erosion, in gullies or along the banks of 
rivers? The beast was found underground, it must 
have lived underground—there is their reasoning. 
Like most savage reasoning, it is strictly logical, but 
the original premises are wrong. You can’t expect 
them to know geology. Even for those of us who 
do, Spencer, there are plenty of unexplained mys¬ 
teries about mammoths.” 

“What, Father?” 

“ There are too many to tell you, now. We’ve 


28 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


got to muster up our courage to go into the hut. 
Your friend the shaman will grow impatient. Come 
along, Spencer, since we must.” 

They entered the hut again, agreeably surprised 
to find that the smell troubled them much less than 
before. 

“ You might get to like it after a while, Father,” 
the boy suggested, with a grin. 

The guide hastily motioned to them to be silent. 
The shaman was beginning his incantations. 




Sorting some big tusks. 


Siberian mammoth-hunters 






The beresovka mammoth at an early stage of excavation. 

Right fore leg and skull exposed. 



Courtesy of H. F. and G. Witherby. 

The beresovka mammoth. 


Mounted exactly as it lay in the silted-up crevasse on the 

river bank. 


CHAPTER II 


A CHARGING MAMMOTH 

The arrangement of the interior of the hut had 
been changed, and, after a moment or two, Spencer 
realized why the odor had become more support¬ 
able. Along the roof of the hut, in the joint of 
the wall, a log had been slightly shifted, making a 
crack one inch wide the whole width of the hut. 
Through this opening, the foul air was rushing up¬ 
ward. Whether the shaman desired it or not, the 
“ yurt ” was being aired. 

On the floor, immediately below these holes, and 
therefore against the wall, a row of small fires had 
been lighted, made of moss charcoal. This sent up 
a faint blue smoke and also gave off some stupefy¬ 
ing fumes. 

From somewhere—neither Spencer nor his father 
could tell where, for the hut was not large enough 
to hide anything and the Tungus certainly had not 
left the place—the shaman had brought out two 
mammoth tusks. They were almost semicircular 

i 

in form, with the upward twist at the ends which is 

characteristic of the species. So far as ivory was 

concerned, they were poor specimens, but were of 

29 



30 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


fair length, a little over nine feet long. He had laid 
them on the ground, their points toward the fire, 
making, as it were, a ring of mammoth ivory. 

The shaman was squatted in this circle, a drum 
between his knees. On the outer side of the ring 
of tusk were several small piles of dampened moss 
and leaves, each seeming to be of a different kind. 
These, also, must have come from some secret 
cache. In his hands the shaman held two huge 
mammoth teeth, weighing about eight pounds each, 
all that his old and withered arms could lift. 

When perfect silence had been established, the 
shaman leaned forward, blew upon the fire, and then 
began to beat the drum, with a regular and monot¬ 
onous rhythm, using the heel of the hand and his 
knuckles alternately. From time to time he leaned 
forward to pick up the mammoth teeth, clashed 
them together like a pair of cymbals, set them down 
again and recommenced drumming. After a time 
he began to sing. 

At his father’s suggestion, Spencer whispered to 
the Yakut guide to try to remember the words, but 
the guide answered that he did not understand 
them very well. They were in some old, old tongue, 
apparently allied to Chukchi, and which was a 
magical tongue, known only to the shamans. All 


A CHARGING MAMMOTH 


81 


that he could grasp was that it was an incantation 
to the Tungus “ devils ” : the mammoth, the polar 
bear, and the killer whale. 

This drumming and singing continued for a long 
while, and, in spite of his desire to keep his senses 
as alert as possible, Spencer began to be conscious 
that the fumes of the charcoal and the monotonous 
rhythm were making his head swim. This was, of 
course, a necessary preparation for the ceremony, 
for all witch-doctors know the necessity of bringing 
their spectators to a semi-hypnotic state. The 
Yakut was already under the influence, but The 
Hunter’s glance was as keen and sharp as ever. 
He was too old a hand to give way so easily, and 
he had known what Zulu witch-doctors were, many 
years before. 

Then, with a deft throw, the shaman scattered 
some handfuls of the damp leaves along the line of 
fires. Instantly, a white, dense cloud arose, and 
lifted toward the line of holes in the roof, forming 
an opaque sheet of smoke. It was so compact that 
the wall beyond could not be seen. 

The shaman rose to his feet and began jumping 
upward, with wild yells. His bent and decrepit 
figure seemed to take on a supernatural energy, and 
his leaps were such as no white athlete could com- 


32 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

pass. Almost it seemed as though he paused a 
second or two, in mid-air, before descending. A 
moment or two of this would have been surprising 
enough, but the shaman continued these frantic 
leaps for several minutes with an incredible agility. 

Then he whirled, and, with gestures so rapid that 
it was difficult for the eye to follow them, he jerked 
his hands forward and back as though he were 
actually throwing an invisible Something at Spen¬ 
cer and his father. The effect was startling. 
While, probably, it was nothing but fancy, the boy 
felt as though he were actually being bombarded by 
something barbaric and strange. 

Without pausing to see whether the hypnotic 
passes—if they were such—had taken effect, the 
shaman squatted down again, in his circle of tusk, 
and began anew his slow chant, to the accompani¬ 
ment of the beating of the “ tungur ” or drum, and 
the clicking clash of the mammoth teeth. 

For some time, nothing startling occurred. The 
chanting droned on, and the smoke curled upward 
slowly, being fed, from time to time, with handfuls 
of leaves. 

Spencer was conscious of a sort of numbness steal¬ 
ing over his senses, making him feel as though he 
were dreaming, though still awake. A feeling of 


A CHARGING MAMMOTH 33 


unreality possessed him. The figure of the shaman 
in the circle of mammoth tusks grew smaller and 
smaller, until it faded away altogether. The wall 
of smoke first grew thicker and thicker, and then, in 
some strange fashion, deeper and deeper, as though 
it were a fog beyond which objects could barely be 
seen. Steadily the semi-transparence of the fog in¬ 
creased, distant objects became clearer, and Spen¬ 
cer realized that the wall of the hut had disappeared 
and that he was looking upon a distant scene. 

The rain was falling heavily. The sky was blue- 
black, shot with a tinge of green, lightnings stabbed 
out from the overhanging masses of cloud, and the 
wind, blowing in violent gusts, drove the rain in 
oblique sheets. 

Upon a turbulent and muddy stretch of rushing 
water, so wide that the strength of the current 
alone showed it to be a river, a tiny steel steamer, 
little bigger than a good-sized rowboat, struggled 
up-stream. Blocks of broken ice, uprooted trees, 
and floating islands of tundra “ cannon-balls ” and 
matted stretches of swamp grass, came hurling 
down the stream, rendering navigation extremely 
dangerous. 

As the picture upon the smoke steadied, Spencer 
heard his father murmur, in amazement: 


34 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


“ That’s Benkendorf, on the Indigirka River! ” 
Instantly, the whole story flashed back to Spen¬ 
cer’s mind, as he saw, pictured before him, the 
finding of the first flesh-and-blood mammoth which 
modem man had ever seen. The scenes brought 
the whole adventure before him, a thrilling adven¬ 
ture in itself, which he had read, only a few days 
before, in Benkendorf’s own words: 


“ In 1846,” he had written, “ there was unusually 
warm weather in the north of Siberia. Already in 
May, abnormal rains poured over the swamps and 
bogs, storms shook the earth, and the streams not 
only carried broken ice to the sea, but also swept 
away large masses of soil thawed by the warm off- 
run of the southern rains. 

“ We steamed up the Indigirka River on the first 
favorable day, in order to continue our work of 
mapping the Arctic Coast and the estuaries of the 
Lena and Indigirka Rivers to a hundred miles above 
their mouths. Though we were already far from 
the ocean, we could see no signs of land. The land¬ 
scape w r as flooded so far as the eye could see. 

“ A lot of debris was coming down-stream, and 
some one had to stand continually, with sounding 
line in hand, to keep us from running aground, 
since there was nothing to show where lay the bed 
of the river. Our little steamboat received many a 
blow from the flotsam which made her shake to the 
keel. A wooden vessel would have been smashed. 

“At the end of the second day we were only forty 
versts (27 miles) up-stream. We saw nothing all 


A CHARGING MAMMOTH 35 

around but floods. For eight days we met with 
hard going of this kind, until at last we reached 
the spot where our Yakuts were to have met us. 
Farther up was a place called Ujandina, whence 
people were to have come to us, for government 
purposes. No one had turned up, however. Evi¬ 
dently the floods had stopped them. 

“As we had been here in former years, we knew 
the place. But how it had changed! The 
Indigirka, here about three versts (2 miles) wide, 
had torn up the land and made itself a fresh chan¬ 
nel. When the floods subsided, we saw, to our as¬ 
tonishment, that the old river-bed had become 
merely that of an insignificant stream. This en¬ 
abled us to shove through the soft mud; and we 
went reconnoitring up the new stream, which had 
cut its way westward. Later, we landed on the new 
bank, and surveyed the undermining and destruc¬ 
tive work of the wild waters that were carrying 
away, with extraordinary rapidity, masses of peat 
and loam. 

“ It was then that we made a wonderful dis¬ 
covery. 

“ The land on which we were walking was turfy 
bog, covered thickly with young plants. Many 
lovely flowers rejoiced the eye in the warm radiance 
of a sun that shone for twenty-two out of the 
twenty-four hours. The stream was tearing away 
the soft sodden bank like chaff, so that it was dan¬ 
gerous to go near the brink. 

“ In a lull in the conversation we heard, under 
our feet, a sudden gurgling and movement in the 
water under the bank. One of our men gave a 
shout, and pointed to a singular shapeless mass 
which was rising and falling in the swirling stream. 


N 


36 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

I had noticed it, but had not paid it any attention, 
thinking it only driftwood. Now we all hastened to 
the bank. We had the boat brought up close, and 
waited until the mysterious thing should again 
show itself. 

“ Our patience was tried. At last, however, a 
huge black horrible mass bobbed up out of the 
water. We beheld a colossal elephant’s head, 
armed with mighty tusks, its long trunk waving un¬ 
cannily in the water, as though seeking something 
it had lost. Breathless with astonishment, I be¬ 
held the monster hardly twelve feet away, with the 
whites of his half-open eyes showing. 

“‘A mammoth! A mammoth!’ some one 
shouted. 

“ I called out: 

“ ‘ Chains and ropes—quick! 9 

“ I will tell you (this account is from a letter 
which Benkendorf wrote to a scientific friend) of 
the preparations we made for securing the monster 
that the river was trying to tear from us. 

“As it sank again under the surface, we had to 
wait for a chance to throw a rope over its head. 
This was accomplished only after many efforts. 

“After a close examination, I satisfied myself 
that the hind legs of the mammoth were still em¬ 
bedded in the frozen mud, and that the waters that 
swept over the caved-in fall of soil from the bank 
would loosen them for us. Accordingly we made a 
noose fast round its neck, threw a chain round the 
tusks, which were eight feet long, drove a stake into 
the ground about twenty feet from the bank, and 
made chain and rope fast to it. 

“ The day passed more quickly than I expected, 
but still the time seemed long enough before the 


A CHARGING MAMMOTH 37 

animal was free at last, which happened about 
twenty-four hours after the cave-in. 

“ The position of the beast interested me; it was 
standing in the earth, thus indicating the manner 
of its destruction, not lying on its side or back, as 
a dead animal naturally would. The soft peat or 
bog on to which it had stepped, thousands and 
thousands of years ago, had given way under the 
weight of the giant, and he had sunk, as he stood, 
on all four feet, unable to save himself. A severe 
frost came, turning into ice both him and the bog 
which overwhelmed him. 

“ The surface of the bog gradually became cov¬ 
ered with driftwood, and sand and uprooted plants 
swept over it in each successive spring freshet. 
Nature's wondrous agencies had worked for its 
preservation. Now, however, the stream had 
brought it once more into the light of day. And I, 
an ephemera of life compared with this primeval 
giant, was sent here by Providence just at the right 
moment to welcome him! 

“ During our evening meal, our outposts an¬ 
nounced the arrival of strangers. A group of 
Yakuts came up on their fast, shaggy ponies. They 
were the people we had arranged to meet, and in¬ 
creased our party to about fifty persons. On our 
pointing out to them our wonderful capture, they 
hastened to the bank. They were all intensely ex¬ 
cited. 

“ For a day I left them in possession, but when, 
on the following day, the ropes and chains gave a 
great jerk, a sign that the mammoth was free from 
the clutch of the frozen soil, I ordered them to exert 
all their strength to drag the beast ashore. At 
length, after much hard work, in which the horses 


38 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


were extremely useful, the animal was brought 
ashore, and we were able to roll the carcass about 
twelve feet from the water. The rapidly decompos¬ 
ing effect of the warm air filled us all with astonish¬ 
ment. 

“ Picture to yourself an elephant with a body 
covered with thick fur, about thirteen feet in height 
and fifteen feet in length, with tusks eight feet long, 
thick and curving outward at their ends. A stout 
trunk six feet long, colossal legs one and one-half 
feet thick, and a tail bare up to the tip, which was 
covered with thick tufty hair. 

“ The beast was fat and well grown. Death 
had overwhelmed him in the fulness of his 
powers. His large, parchment-like naked ears lay 
turned up over the head. About the shoulders and 
back he had stiff hair, about a foot long, like a 
mane. The long outer hair was deep brown and 
coarsely rooted. The top of the head looked so 
wild and steeped in mud that it resembled the 
ragged bark of an old oak. On the sides it was 
cleaner, and under the outer hair there appeared 
everywhere a wool, very soft, warm and thick, of 
a fallow brown tint. The giant was well protected 
against the cold. 

“ The whole appearance of the great beast was 
fearfully strange and wild. It had not the shape of 
our present elephants. As compared with the In¬ 
dian elephant, its head was rough, the brain-case 
low and narrow, the trunk and mouth much larger. 
The modern elephant is an awkward animal, but, 
compared with this mammoth, he is as an Arabian 
steed to a coarse, cumbersome dray-horse. 

“ I could not divest myself of a feeling of fear as 
I approached the head. The open eyes gave the 


A CHARGING MAMMOTH 39 

beast a lifelike aspect, as though at any moment 
it might stir, struggle to its feet, and bear down 
upon us with stentorian roar. . . . 

“ The bad smell of the carcass warned us that it 
was time to save of it what we could; the encroach¬ 
ing river, too, bade us hasten.” 

The words seemed to ring in Spencer’s ears as he 
watched, almost without realizing the marvel, the 
acting anew of this dramatic discovery of a century 
before. 

“ First we hacked off the tusks and sent them 
aboard our boat. Then the natives tried to hew off 
the head, but, notwithstanding their efforts, this 
was slow work. As the belly of the brute was cut 
open, out rolled the intestines, and the stench was 
so dreadful that I could not avert my nausea and 
had to turn away. But I had the stomach cut out 
and dragged aside. It was well filled. The con¬ 
tents were instructive and well preserved. The 
chief contents were young shoots of fir and pine. A 
quantity of young fir-cones, also in a chewed state, 
were mixed with the mass. 

“As we were eviscerating the animal, I was as 
careless and forgetful as my Yakuts, who did not 
notice that the ground was sinking under their feet 
until a cry of alarm warned me of their predica¬ 
ment, as I was still groping in the beast’s stomach. 

“ Startled, I sprang up and beheld how the un¬ 
dermined bank was caving in, to the imminent dan¬ 
ger of our Yakuts and our laboriously rescued find. 
Fortunately our boat was close at hand, so our na¬ 
tives were saved in the nick of time. But the car- 


40 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

cass of the mammoth was swept away by the swift 
current, and sank, never to appear to us again.” 

With a vividness and detail that no story could 
give, Spencer and his father saw this amazing 
drama of exploration acted out before their own 
eyes, saw for themselves the first discovery of a 
flesh-and-blood mammoth made by any modem 
civilized man. When the carcass of the mammoth 
was carried down the raging, yellow river, the boy 
felt as though it were his own discovery which was 
escaping him. 

He wanted to speak to his father, but it seemed 
to him that everything was far, far away. His 
voice did not seem under his control, his ears were 
buzzing. Before he could formulate his thoughts, 
the shifting smoke steadied again, became misty, 
then transparent, and a new scene appeared. 

This was again a river, but narrow and confined 
between fairly high clay banks. There was a row¬ 
boat on the river, more correctly a “ baidara ”—a 
skin canoe which closely resembles the smaller Es¬ 
kimo “ umiak.” In this boat was a Tungus canoe- 
man and two passengers, in whom he recognized 
his father and himself. If Spencer’s interest had 
been excited by the first scene, how much more by 
this, in which he, himself, was taking a part! 


A CHARGING MAMMOTH 41 

To the left, Spencer saw, in the shaman’s smoke, 
a clump of pines and stunted larches beyond which 
there was a sharp turn in the river. A smaller trib¬ 
utary stream poured down its turbid waters into 
the main river at this point. This little copse, on 
the top of a bank that was high enough almost to 
be called a cliff, was a clear landmark in this flat 
and dreary landscape. The “ baidara ” turned up 
this tributary, though the force of the stream and 
its swiftness made progress difficult. Indeed, the 
current grew so rapid that the Tungus boatman 
paddled for the bank, and Spencer saw his father 
and himself gingerly creep from out the cranky 
skin-canoe to the frozen shore. 

The native stayed beside the baidara, but 
Spencer and his father—so the vision on the smoke 
displayed—walked up the right bank of the little 
river. The banks were steep, but not high. After 
what seemed to him like a long time of walking, 
they came to a place where the stream widened into 
a valley, perhaps a mile in length, with fifty yards 
of dry land on either side of the stream. These 
details fixed themselves in Spencer’s memory. 

The smoke blurred for an instant, then rose 
again, but with a greenish tinge in it. The shaman 
had thrown upon his fires some different kind of 


1 


42 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

fuel. An aromatic smell rose from it which made 
Spencer feel all the more dream-like. 

Down in the valley, below them, the boy could 
see a huge form, black and ungainly, wrenching at 
the low growth which lay scattered in patches over 
the valley bottom. He knew intuitively that this 
must be a mammoth. 

A wild excitement and a sudden fear seized him. 
In spite of his burning curiosity, he was conscious 
of a desire to keep far away from the hulking mass. 
It looked prehistoric and unnatural. 

Then, on the smoke, he saw his father scrambling 
down the steep bank, evidently with the intention 
of getting a nearer look at the beast. The boy’s 
fears vanished, or, at least, they were overcome by a 
natural shame. Was he hanging back, thus, be- 
cause of cowardice, and letting his father face the 
danger alone? Never! 

He went down that slooping bank in a rush. On 
the magic mist-wall he could see himself with abso¬ 
lute clearness; he even saw himself catch on a 
ragged root of scrub as he slid, and tear his trousers 
just above the knee. 

Down the valley, it was easier walking, and he 
had fortunately escaped injury. 

Back in the shaman’s hut, the two Americans, 



% 


Wr 





An elephant road in open country. An elephant road in dense jungle. 




A CHARGING MAMMOTH 43 

father and son, saw their very selves advancing 
steadily and surely toward the mammoth. 

Seen close, the monster was of huge size, shaggy 
and grim, yet the big tusks, turned inward at the 
tips, looked more formidable than cruel; they 
lacked the wicked menace of the straight-tusked 
African rogue elephant. The beast was not very 
much bigger in body than the largest of modern 
elephants, but his thick coat of long coarse black 
hair and brown wool added almost a foot in ap¬ 
parent height, and the ragged down-falling hair, 
coming almost to the ground, gave an appearance 
of vastly greater bulk. His ears were smaller than 
those of the modern elephant, and the tail was 
short. 

Suddenly the huge beast turned and looked 
straight at the two who were approaching. 

The low-angled Arctic sun shone full on the 
tusks. They were about ten feet long, and, at the 
base, more than twice as thick as a man’s leg. 
Gleaming against the mane of black hair, which 
showed only a glint of the rufous undercoat of wool, 
their tremendous size and weight revealed what 
fearsome strength a beast must possess that carried 
them so easily. What matter if their tips turned 
inward? He did not need them for attack or de- 


44 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

* # • 

fense. Invulnerable, himself, he could stamp any 
enemy—even the prehistoric Great Cave-Bear— 
into a shapeless mass with a single blow of the foot. 

His small eyes gleamed wickedly. The trunk 
curled upward slowly. 

Suddenly, without a sound, the mammoth 
charged upon them, bent on killing. 

On the curtain of smoke—yet with no sense that 
he was not looking at an actual happening,—Spen¬ 
cer saw his father throw rifle to shoulder. The gun 
missed fire. He saw himself do the same, though 
he was carrying only a sporting rifle of small cali¬ 
bre. The click of the hammer told him that his gun 
had missed fire, also. 

The huge beast was upon them, trunk upraised, 
the ears spread out. 

Two strides and all would be over. Escape, there 
could be done! 

At that very instant, there came a sudden hiss. 
The shaman had dashed water on the line of 
fires. 

The mammoth vanished in a whirling cloud, as 
the dense smoke eddied, writhed, broke into curl¬ 
ing whorls, thinned and drifted upward through 
the holes in the roof. 

Nothing was to be seen of the river valley, noth- 



A CHARGING MAMMOTH 45 


ing of the mighty creature which had menaced 
them. There was nothing but the wall of the hut, 
the line of half-extinguished fires, and the shaman 
squatted between the two mammoth tusks. He 
was still drumming softly. 

Then he set down his drum, rose, and turned to 
the two figures of that magic terror-drama. 

“ In a second more/ 5 he declared quietly and con¬ 
vincingly, “ the ‘ old one 5 would have killed you 
both! ” 


CHAPTER III 


FOSSIL IVORY 

Spencer and his father stumbled out of the sha¬ 
man’s hut, wondering and a little dazed. After a 
curt command to Ivan to pay the witch-doctor the 
hundred cartridges that had been promised, The 
Hunter set out along the little track that crossed 
the tundra, at a sharp walk. It was his custom to 
walk swiftly and far whenever a problem puzzled 
him, and Spencer, though fairly athletic himself, 
had trouble keeping up with his father. 

Presently the silence grew burdensome, and Spen¬ 
cer broke it. 

“ What was that magic, Father? Some kind of 
telepathy? ” 

“ Perhaps, for the Benkendorf mammoth-find¬ 
ing; both of us knew the story, and he might have 
read our thoughts. For the second part of it, where 
we saw ourselves, it could not have been telepathy. 
There’s no use asking me how it was done; I don’t 
pretend to know. You may call it a case of ‘ crowd- 
hypnosis’ or give it any name you please, but 
there’s always something in the doings of these 

primitive wizards which escapes analysis.” 

46 


FOSSIL IVORY 


47 


He pointed to the boy’s knee. 

“How did your trousers get torn?” 

“ Sliding down the bank-” Spencer stopped 

suddenly. “ But—but, Father, we only imagined 

we saw all those things! How could-” he 

stopped in bewilderment. 

“ It’s a hole in the cloth, isn’t it? ” 

Spencer examined the tear. 

“Yes, a regular triangular rip, just as if I had 
torn it on a root. Why, half the knee is gone! ” 

“ You’re sure it wasn’t done before? ” 

“ No, I’m sure. I’d have seen it, when we were 
waiting outside the shaman’s hut. A tear four 
inches long—why, a fellow would spot that at 
once.” 

“ How did it happen, then? ” 

The boy looked at his father in stupefaction. 

“ I haven’t the least idea! ” 

“ Nor have I.” 

They walked on for some time in silence. 

“ Could it be true, Father? ” the lad queried. 

“ Could what be true? All that we saw, you 
mean? A living mammoth charging down on us? 
How could it be true since all the mammoths have 
been dead for thousands of years? ” 

“ You think it was all a sort of a fantasy, then? ” 




48 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

“ Not at all. I’m sure that there is some truth in 
it, somewhere. A shaman has a reputation to lose. 
He would forfeit a great deal of his prestige in the 
tribe if we came back and spread the word that his 
witchcraft was only a falsehood.” 

“ Then you think there is a valley, like the one 
we saw? ” 

“ Very likely. Also the little copse of trees set 
on the top of a cliff. That may be true enough. 
The shaman would have little difficulty in making 
us see what he wanted us to see. The Hindu fakirs 
do it, every day in the week. But, to make us see 
it, he must have seen it himself; for him to have 
seen it, the copse must be there. We shall see! ” 

“ You mean to try to find it? ” 

“ I mean to go there, Spencer.” 

“ But since it was only a dream—a vision—a 
hypnotic suggestion or something of that sort? ” 

“A thing may be true, even if it is shown in an 
extraordinary or unusual manner. But there’s 
another thing, too. He took the cartridges as pay 
for his information. A Tungus is generally honest. 
If his magic had been nothing but a make-believe 
to fool us, he would not have taken the ammuni¬ 
tion. No, there’s surely something behind that 
whole story. What, I don’t know.” 


FOSSIL IVORY 


49 


“ But how will you find the place, Father? ” 

“ That is easy. Any of the natives will know it. 
A landmark like that copse will be familiar to every 
hunter in the tribe. Besides, they will all know a 
spot where there is a likelihood of finding fossil 
ivory. It is the principal article of trade, here. If 
there really is mammoth ivory in that valley, the 
only reason for its remaining there is that the na¬ 
tives have been too much terrified by the story of 
the living mammoth to go near the place. The fa¬ 
mous Adams Mammoth was nearly lost to science 
by just such a superstitious story;” 

“ How, Father? ” 

“ Very simply! In 1799, Schumarov, a nomadic 
Tungus hunter, happened upon a hairy monster 
protruding from the side of a crumbling bank as if 
—to quote Bassett Digby—‘ as if literally springing 
out of the earth in answer to the Trump of Doom.’ ” 
“ I suppose the Tungus ran away? ” 

“ He did, and never went near the place for 
another two years. He went back, finally, but with 
a good deal of fear of what he might see. The sec¬ 
ond appearance was more alarming than the first. 
Almost the whole head, with the tusks, was ex¬ 
posed, and one of the hind legs had kicked free. 
Schumarov did not linger on the scene. He hurried 


50 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

home—a three weeks’ journey—and told his wife 
of his adventure. She told a shaman. The witch¬ 
doctor prophesied that all his children would die 
within the year.” 

“And did they? ” 

“None of them; the shaman claimed the credit 
of having saved them by his magic, and demanded, 
as his fee, half the value of those tusks. This 
forced Schumarov’s hand, and, confident that he 
had the shaman’s magical assistance, he plucked up 
courage and actually had the nerve to go and cut 
out the tusks, which he sold to a Russian trader. 
The news of the find reached Petrograd six years 
later and the Russian Imperial Academy sent Pro¬ 
fessor Adams to investigate. He went the following 
summer. But this was seven years later. The 
mammoth had become entirely exposed, and the 
wolves had devoured most of it, even the skin. 
That is saying a good deal for the jaws of a wolf.” 

“ Is the skin so thick? ” 

“ From three-quarters of an inch to an inch and 
a half, and as tough as ironwood where it hasn’t 
rotted. Skinning a mammoth is not child’s play. 
Besides, the skin, alone, weighs a ton or so and 
mammoths are generally found a thousand miles or 
more from a railway, in a country where there are 


FOSSIL IVORY 


51 


no roads. But, to return to Schumarov, if it hadn't 
been for the commercial value of fossil ivory, he 
would never have dared to brave his superstition, 
and science would have lost its first mammoth." 

“ Is fossil ivory any good? ” 

The Hunter fairly jumped. 

“ It has been a prime article of trade for a couple 
of thousand years and more. One of Aristotle’s 
pupils was a dealer in ‘ fossil ivory and bones.’ 
The father of Demosthenes, the great orator, was 
a wholesale ivory dealer, and it is on record that he 
distinguished between mammoth and elephant 
tusks. The bazaar at Khiva, in Southwest Asia, 
has been famous for its ivory trade for over a thou¬ 
sand years and we have written records of sales of 
eleven-foot tusks, which certainly no modern 
Asiatic elephant ever carried. Chinese writings tell 
of regular expeditions into Siberia in quest of mam¬ 
moth tusks. To say that millions of mammoth 
tusks have been sold in trade would be no exaggera¬ 
tion, and hundreds come to the market every year. 
But the scholars of the Middle Ages thought them¬ 
selves wiser than the ancients and refused to be¬ 
lieve in mammoths." 

“ Why, what did they think them? " 

“All sorts of things, my son. There was a legend- 



52 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

ary giant, St. Christopher; have you ever heard of 
him?” 

“ Yes, he was supposed to have carried the 
Christ-child across a flooded river.” 

“ The same. Well, in Valencia, in Spain, the 
thigh-bone of a mammoth is still paraded in pro¬ 
cession in the streets, every year, as a relic of the 
saint, and a mammoth tooth is shown as one of the 
teeth of St. Christopher.” 

“ What nonsense! ” 

“ Why? In the Middle Ages it was much more 
logical to believe in giants than in Arctic elephants. 
The Bible said so, for one thing: 4 There were giants 
in those days/ you remember, and what would a 
fairy-tale be without its ogre? As a matter of fact, 
the skeleton of a giant, nineteen feet high, was re¬ 
constructed in Lucerne.” 

“ Father! Nineteen feet high! ” 

“ Precisely. He was found near Lucerne. An 
anatomist of the University of Basle, Dr. Plater, 
wired his bones into place, to the admiration of the 
town. That was in 1577. It was not until nearly a 
century and a half later that a naturalist proved the 
‘ giant’s ’ bones to be those of a mammoth. The 
‘ Giant of Dauphine ’ was a mammoth, so was * Og, 
King of Basan/ found in Austria, and even Eng- 


FOSSIL IVORY 


53 


land had its ‘ Gloucester giant ’ in the reign of James 
I. After that time, the fashion in giants changed, 
and every one agreed that the mammoth bones and 
tusks must be the remains of the war-elephants in 
Hannibal’s army.” 

“ Hannibal! ’Way up in Siberia! ” 

“ Your medieval geographers did not let a little 
discrepancy like a few thousand miles or so trouble 
them. To suggest that Hannibal might have gone 
from Spain to Italy with a huge army by way of 
the Arctic Ocean was a mere bagatelle to a theorist 
of the Middle Ages. That theory was never put 
down until the great naturalist Cuvier proved by 
exact science that mammoth bones and teeth could 
not have belonged to any living species of ele¬ 
phant.” 

“ And you say there are plenty of fossil tusks 
still? ” 

“ Uncounted thousands, yes, millions, probably.” 
The Hunter stopped and walked more slowly, for 
he was getting out of breath. “ Here,” he said, tak¬ 
ing a clipping from his wallet, “ here is what Bassett 
Digby says of his own experiences of mammoth¬ 
hunting in Siberia. He knows what he’s writing 
about, and he was up here just two years ago. He 
writes: 


54 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


“ ‘ Up into the North we went, in search of pre¬ 
historic ivory. It was an exciting quest, for though 
I had obtained clues from the natives to spots up 
in that vast empty wilderness where tusks would 
almost certainly be found, there was no knowing 
whether they might already have been secured by 
a Russian trader or one of his scouts; or whether 
they would prove to be fine, unblemished stuff, fit 
to compete on the billiard-table with ivory that had 
been roaming about on the hoof, down in the 
French Equatorial, last year, or merely crumbling 
rubbish. . . . There was the chance, too, of get¬ 
ting within accessible range of that greatest of all 
prizes of the paleontologist—a flesh-and-blood 
mammoth, revealed by a landslip of the spring 
thaw in exactly the same condition as when a fall 
into a snow-filled chasm cold-storaged him 250,000 
years ago/ ” 

“That’s what we want! ” interrupted Spencer. 

“ Let us hope that the shaman’s magic may be a 
clue! ” agreed the Professor, and he continued read¬ 
ing: 

“ ‘ Numbers of unpleasant things might happen, 
for the north country held quantities of leprosy and 
other horrible skin diseases, tramp-bandits, escaped 
convicts, vermin of every species, and mosquitoes of 
all kinds. 

. “ ‘ Adventures are not rare, up there. The first 
night, on the north trek, in came an engineer re¬ 
turning from the gold-fields. A brodyag-’ ” 


“ What’s a ‘ brodyag,’ Father? ” 



FOSSIL IVORY 


55 


“A desperate outlaw. Some of them are crim¬ 
inals, escaped from Siberian convict gangs, but a 
large proportion are political prisoners, risking 
every form of hardship and danger to creep unseen 
through the thousands of miles of forest and steppe 
back to Russia. Very few ever win through. Win¬ 
ter and the wolves get nearly all. 

“ ‘ The brodyag,’ ” he continued, quoting, “ ‘ had 
just clambered up behind his tarantass, or carriage, 
during the slow going up a hill, and had begun to 
cut the moorings of his baggage. The engineer’s 
revolver jammed, so he held it upside down and 
swiftly ripped up the fumbling hand he could see 
in the starlight, through a gap in the hood, with the 
“ sight ” of the weapon. Done neatly, and with ad¬ 
equate pressure, you can get excellent results from 
an empty revolver in this way, but take care to 
tackle the back of the hand so that the fingers can’t 
grasp the barrel before the damage is done. The 
brodyag dropped off with a loud howl, the horses 
were whipped up, and that was that. 

“ ‘ For many days of the journey northward, I 
was rowed down-stream, the women doing all the 
work. Such maps as had been procurable I car¬ 
ried. They showed the Arctic Ocean and its larger 
islands, the main rivers and the main mountain 
ranges, and gave dignified prominence to the names 
of the rare little groups of squalid hovels, surround¬ 
ing a trader’s hut, that constitute villages up there. 
Enormous tracts of Northeast Siberia, however, 
are unexplored, and likely to remain so for a long 
time. 


56 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

“‘ Our luck was in. One morning, in a village, 
jve located a really big hoard. 

“ ‘A key was turned in a massive padlock. Bolts 
were drawn. With a muffled clang a sheet-iron 
door—strange to see in that part of the world!— 
was flung open. 

“ * We stepped out of the blinding July sunshine 
into pitch-darkness. We sent Nikolai Ivanovitch 
for a taper, but, before he came back, our eyes be¬ 
gan to get used to the gloom; and, dimly at first, 
then more and more clearly, this great heap of 
Arctic loot appeared, like the slow developing of a 
photographic plate. 

“ < Huge horns that curled this way and that. 
Straightish horns, and horns that writhed. Horns 
curled almost in circular spirals. The hollows of 
horns, and the tips of horns. Tips blunt, and tips 
sharp. Horns as slim as a bullock’s or as thick as 
a tree-trunk. Horns smooth as satin or gnarled and 
rough as weather-worn old logs. No, not horns; 
but tusks, mammoth tusks by the dozen, by the 
score—hundreds and hundreds of them, cairn upon 
cairn, stack upon stack. Tons and tons of prehis¬ 
toric ivory! 

“ 1 1 fell a-musing in that dim vault, of the vicis¬ 
situdes of this store of tusks, and of the men who 
faced the rigors of the coldest region on earth to ob¬ 
tain them. 

“‘ How petty our historical periods seemed in 
comparison with their age! Some of the rugged old 
bull mammoths who fought their battles with these 
giant eleven-foot tusks may have ranged the top 
of the. world 500,000 years ago. Others passed 
their time upon earth only a few tens of thousands 
of years before the Egyptian pyramids were built. 


FOSSIL IVORY 


57 


“ 1 How were they found, these tusks, and what 
of the men who had found them? Which had been 
hacked from a shaggy-hided monster of flesh-and- 
blood, newly exposed by a landslide on the thawing 
cliff of a Kolyma creek? Which had been seen afar 
off, dark, curly things sticking out of the level sea 
of snow on the Taimyr? Which had been dredged 
in a trawl from the shifting bars of the Lena delta? 
Which had been smashed or sawn from a gigantic 
white skull bleaching in a tangle of tundra bram¬ 
bles? Which had been raked up from the sandy 
beaches of the Olenek, along the Polar shore, or 
brought into view by the gale-driven ice-packs that 
pound along the undermined cliffs of Kotelnoi, one 
of the Ivory Isles of the North Polar Sea where no 
one lives and only the hardiest and most daring 
hunters dare to venture? 

“ ‘ Yakut and Samoyede, Tungus and Lamut, 
Yukaghir, Ostiak and Tchuktcha, men of races that 
few people have ever heard of, had ranged the un¬ 
mapped Arctic wilds for this treasure trove, now 
mere grist to the mills of commerce, flung, like so 
many bales of cotton or kegs of pork, at the feet of 
a trader! 

“ ‘ Dangers innumerable had been braved for 
these tusks, men maimed and killed. Leprosy and 
snow-blindness, frost-bite and starvation, lingering 
deaths in crevasses in the ice. Frail skin canoes 
capsized by the unexpected shifting of that awk¬ 
ward cargo—a mammoth tusk never seems to want 
to lie still. Death from the paw of a vengeful polar 
bear, from the teeth of a ravening wolf-pack. . . . 

“ ‘ They brought the tusks out into the sunshine, 
one day, and we sorted them. These were perfect, 
those were pretty good; here were some with seri- 


58 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


ous flaws. That heap yonder would serve for bil¬ 
liard balls; the next heap for making the Russian 
ball, which is larger. This for knife-handles, that 
for combs. These for powder-boxes, those for piano 
keys. 

“ ‘ Each tusk had to be closely examined, this 
side and that, point and hollow. A long job for us 
and an arduous one for the men,—for these tusks 
weigh a couple of hundredweight, sometimes. 
They worked well so long as their flagging spirits 
were revived with glimpses of small silver and al¬ 
lusions to vodka, the national intoxicant. 

“ ‘ Handling a thousand or two mammoth tusks 
is instructive. You soon learn that the average 
text-book is quite wrong in picturing the typical 
mammoth with tusks so curly that they form nearly 
a circle. Not one tusk in ten forms a third of a 
circle, not one in twenty even a semicircle. Nearly 
all have a curious “ writhe.” When you drop them 
on the ground, they do not lie flat. 

“‘As for length. Well, of those I examined in 
Northeast Siberia, twenty or thirty ran between 
nine feet, six inches and ten feet, six inches. A few 
ran eleven feet and an inch or two. One eleven- 
footer, in particular, had a skin of beautifully sym¬ 
metric grain, like a brown kid glove seen under a 
magnifying glass; it was mahogany-color, not a 
crack in it, sound as the tusk of a freshly killed 
elephant. Another tusk ran eleven feet, five inches. 
One tusk ran twelve feet, one inch. 

“ ‘ The monster tusk of the lot ran twelve feet, 
nine inches. It was bright blue, and seemed to be 
a cow tusk. This tusk ranks with two others as the 
second biggest of which records exist. The biggest 
mammoth tusk in the world is the left one of a 


FOSSIL IVORY 


59 


monster pair in the possession of the Imperial 
Academy of Sciences in Petrograd. This pair came 
from a skull which a trader found in the cliff of the 
Kolyma River. The right tusk measures twelve 
feet, nine inches, and the left one thirteen feet, 
seven inches and weighs 185 pounds. 

“ 4 1 doubt if there is any other natural growth, 
animal or vegetable, extinct or existent, that varies 
in color so much as the mammoth tusk as found in 
Arctic Siberia. Two or three that I examined were 
as white as modern elephant tusks. They must 
have come straight out of clean ice. There are 
tusks that look like stained mahogany, highly pol¬ 
ished near the point, though coarsening toward the 
butt. There are blends of mahogany and white, 
and mahogany and cream. There are bright blue 
tusks, with a powdery bloom on them that you can 
rub off with your finger; tusks of steely blue; tusks 
of walnut, and russet and brick-red. 

“ ‘ Not only are these tints present, but there are 
rich and delicate combinations—superimposed one 
on another—of several tints on the same tusk, pol¬ 
ished surfaces of softly blending tints ranging the 
entire spectrum. Understand, however, it is only 
the glazed skin on the tusk that is tinted. Beneath 
one-tenth inch of this and a layer of brownish or 
creamy bark about one-fourth inch deep, is white 
ivory. 

“ 1 But only about a quarter of the tusks are in 
such fine preservation. The rest, in color and 
bark, are extraordinarily like weather-worn old 
limbs of trees, the dead wood you find underfoot in 
forests. And there were the tusks that had been ex¬ 
posed to water action; pounded about the Arctic 
beaches and rolled along the pebbly bed of swift 


60 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


creeks swollen with spring’s melted snows; gripped 
in jammed masses of driftwood and rocks for years 
—perhaps centuries—curious dead-white spindles 
and lumps, pitted and honeycombed.* 

“ Note, Spencer,” The Hunter continued, “ that 
was just one hoard. There are, undoubtedly, many 
more.” 

“ But why didn’t the natives bring it down to 
market, themselves? ” 

“ In their pockets? Think of the capital that 
would be required to handle and transport several 
tons of mammoth ivory over a thousand miles of 
country where there is not the faintest semblance 
of a road! All the rivers run down toward the 
Arctic Ocean. Think of the organization, of the 
food! And the natives would never obey one of 
their own race as a leader. No, fossil ivory has to 
be gone after.” 

“ Shall we get any? ” 

“ If I hear of a hoard, I shall arrange to take it, 
certainly, and to sell it for the cause of science. 
Strictly speaking, it would belong to the Detroit 
Museum and might serve to finance some other sci¬ 
entific expedition. But I am not going out of my 
way for any commercial aim. I am here to find a 
flesh-and-blood mammoth, if possible.” 


FOSSIL IVORY 


61 


“ Or a living one, still better! ” 

“ You’ll never see anything more living than the 
mammoth we saw in the shaman’s hut, an hour 
ago.” 

“ I’m not sure that I want to, Father. I’ll admit 
that I was scared.” 

“ I was afraid, myself. And, as I said to you be¬ 
fore, there was something about it that I don’t un¬ 
derstand. How did your trousers get torn? Visions 
do not have material powers.” 

“ Could the shaman have done it himself, on the 
sly, when I was half-dreaming? ” 

“ He might, Spencer, he might have done it. But 
there’s more than trickery there, it seems to me. 
Anyway, I shall lose no time in hunting that copse 
upon the cliffs.” 

“ When shall we start, Father? ” 

“ To-morrow. I shall not be at ease until I have 
solved the mystery.” 


CHAPTER IV 


A HAIRY MONSTER 

As though to bring reality to the prophetic vision 
of the shaman, Spencer and his father found them¬ 
selves, next day, in a little baidara, with a single 
Tungus canoeman. It had been their intention to 
take Ivan in the boat with them, but the Yakut 
refused, pointblank. 

He, too, had seen the fearsome-tusked mammoth 
on the wall of smoke and he refused to go to the 
valley of the vision. He had done his full duty, 
he declared, in guiding the Americans to the shaman 
of this isolated Tungus village, lost on the desolate 
tundra, and thereby procuring for them a clue. 
More, he would not do. He would not go any¬ 
where near the place where the mammoth was sup¬ 
posed to be, until he was well assured either that 
there was no mammoth there, or that the beast was 
really dead. 

A second baidara followed, carrying food. Some¬ 
what to the boy’s surprise, the natives of the village 
had at once recognized the shaman’s description of 

the pine copse growing on the top of a cliff, and 

62 


A HAIRY MONSTER 


63 


had declared it to be five days’ journey away by 
boat. For some reason or other, Spencer had sup¬ 
posed the valley to be quite close. 

The journey thither was monotonous, for the 
slowly-running river ran between muddy banks 
with never a hill or tree to break the line of the 
horizon. Nothing was to be seen but the dreary 
landscape of knobby plain or moss-clumps in 
marshy water, with never-melted ice that lay all 
summer long on the north sides of the larger 
shrubby clumps. 

Spencer’s restless spirit disliked the silence and 
the barrenness, but, by the look on his father’s face, 
he saw that his father was in deep thought, and he 
knew, of old, that it was not wise to interrupt with 
purely idle questioning. At the same time, even in 
his most concentrated moments, The Hunter was 
always willing to give information. 

“ Father,” the boy asked, thoughtfully, “ is the 
modern elephant descended from the mammoth?” 

“ Only very indirectly,” came the reply. “ None 
of the species of modern elephant has come from 
the Hairy Mammoth of these parts. The line 
which has developed into the Asiatic Elephant of 
to-day branched off from the Southern Mammoth 
half a million years ago. Do you want me to give 


64 THE TUSIv-HUNTERS 

you a trifle of scientific talk? Very well! There 
were three ancestral lines of big Proboscideans be¬ 
fore modern elephants appeared on the scene. 
These were the Dinotheres, the Mastodons, and the 
Mammoths/’ 

“ I thought mastodons and mammoths were the 
same thing! ” 

The Hunter-Professor turned sharply, almost up¬ 
setting the frail skin canoe. 

“ Spencer!” he exclaimed. “ One would think 
that you had never learned anything! For good¬ 
ness sake, if you are on a scientific expedition, do 
try to learn a little about what you are doing! ” 

“ Well, Father, a mastodon and a mammoth look 
much about the same, in pictures, anyway.” 

“You can’t always go by looks, Spencer. A 
lemur looks like a squirrel, but it is really more a 
monkey, and the fur seal is really more a bear than 
the true seal to which it bears so close a resem¬ 
blance. In the case of mammoths and mastodons, 
the teeth tell the story. Tusks are teeth, remem¬ 
ber.” 

“ How did teeth turn into tusks, Father? ” Spen¬ 
cer continued questioning, delighted to have started 
his father in conversation. 

“ Very simply. Like Topsy, in Uncle Tom’s 


A HAIRY MONSTER 65 

Cabin, they ‘ growed.’ But it took some time for 
them to grow.” 

“ Didn’t the very first elephant have any tusks? ” 
“ The 4 very first/ as you put it, wasn’t an ele¬ 
phant at all. Here, since we’ve nothing else to do 
and there is not much to see, I’ll explain to you, 
Son, as simply as I can, how elephants came to be. 

“ You’ve never shown much interest in geology, 
Spencer, but you ought to know, at least, that the 
Age of Giant Reptiles came to an end during the 
Cretaceous Period, or the Period of Chalk. That 
closed about four million years ago, and it had 
lasted for about a million years previously. After 
all, Son, a million years is quite a long time, long 
enough for a fauna to undergo some changes. It 
isn’t true to suppose that the Giant Reptiles were 
wiped out suddenly, and that the Mammals at¬ 
tained supremacy with a jump.” 

“No, I shouldn’t say that something which took 
a million years to happen was exactly sudden! ” 
“Nor I, though some geologists would. Now, 
during the Age of Giant Reptiles, there were al¬ 
ready a few generalized types of ancestral proto¬ 
mammals; but, except for their teeth, we know 
almost nothing about them. The Age of Mammals 
began with the Tertiary Period. Already in the 


66 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

first division of that Period—which is known as 
the Eocene Epoch, or the Dawn-of-Recent-Animals 
Epoch—we find that nearly all the giant reptiles 
or saurians had died out, and that warm-blooded 
mammals had usurped their places.” 

“ I did know that much, Father! ” protested 
Spencer, not wanting to seem too ignorant. 

“ Did you? I’m not so sure! But that is not 
the point, just now. I’m not going to trouble you 
with geology. One thing at a time. You want to 
find out about mammoths and elephants and to 
learn where elephants’ tusks came from. Let us 
stick to that point. 

“ We will begin in the Dawn or Eocene Epoch, 
and see what kind of beast was the great-great¬ 
grandfather of the elephant, a few million years 
back. On the shores of the Lake of Moeris, an 
ancient lake once draining into the Nile, in Egypt, 
and now nearly dry, the bones of a strange animal 
were found, which seems to be the most primitive 
of the Proboscideans. He was given the name 
‘ Moeritherium.’ ” 

“ What was he like, Father? ” 

“ He must have resembled a snoutless pig with 
five-toed feet very much more than an elephant, to 
my way of thinking! He stood about three feet 



Courtesy of Herbert & Daniel Co. Drawn by Alice B. Woodward. 

Moeritherium. 

The elephant’s earliest known ancestor. 




Courtesy of Herbert & Daniel Co. Drawn by Alice B. Woodward. 

Palaeomastodon. 

How the elephant’s trunk began to develop. 




67 


A HAIRY MONSTER 

high at the shoulder, had a sloping pig-like face not 
in the least like the vertical face of the modern 
elephant, and he had four slightly enlarged teeth— 
the incisor teeth—two on the upper jaw and two 
on the lower. An extremely interesting point about 
him is that his brain capacity was proportionately 
a good deal larger than that of the other beasts by 
which he was surrounded. The Elephant’s intel¬ 
ligence can be traced back to his earliest ancestor. 

“ Before we leave Moeritherium, Spencer, it 
might interest you to know that his nearest cousins 
were the primitive sea-cows now represented by 
the dugongs and the manatees, the creatures whose 
appearance and habits gave rise to the old legends 
about mermaids.” 

“ I’d never have thought of giving elephants and 
mermaids the same great-grandfather! ” exclaimed 
Spencer. 

“ No, there doesn’t seem much outward resem¬ 
blance, but the eye of Science can see it, just the 
same. This was only at the very beginning. Ele- 
phanthood had a long road to travel. 

“ The next link in the chain upward was a 
creature named Paleomastodon. In his prime he 
got to be the size of a pony; he had a fairly long 
neck, a sloping face and a long chin, on which 


68 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


rested a prehensile upper lip. This was not yet a 
trunk, properly speaking, but it foreshadowed the 
coming of a trunk. Nature was already preparing 
a scaffolding on which to support the trunk that 
was to come. So far as tusks were concerned, 
Paleomastodon had improved on Moeritherium. 
He was the proud possessor of a couple of spoon¬ 
shaped lower incisor teeth, and a pair of upper in¬ 
cisor tusks, as much as five inches long. These 
tusks had bands of tooth enamel on the outer sides, 
clearly showing their derivation from cutting teeth. 
His grinding teeth were better developed than 
Moeritherium and show him to be the direct an¬ 
cestor of the big Narrow-Toothed Mastodon which 
was to follow. Paleomastodon flourished through¬ 
out the next division of time, the Oligocene or Far- 
Recent-Modern-Animals Epoch, at the end of 
which appeared a broad-toothed and primitive 
Pygmy Mastodon, found in Algeria.” 

“ Mastodons seem to have been scattered all over 
the world in those days, Father.” 

“ They were. They flourished in every continent 
except Australia; I’ll explain to you, some time, 
why they were never there. But let us get on. We 
pass next into the third division of the Tertiary 
Period, which is known as the Miocene or Less- 


A HAIRY MONSTER 


69 


Recent-Modern-Animals Epoch, and which was a 
very important epoch for the elephant race. Na¬ 
ture, apparently undetermined in which way to 
develop the elephant, passed through two stages 
(Euelephas and Stegodon) to try out three different 
kinds of ancestral elephant. These were the Dino- 
theres, the Mastodons, and the Mammoths. 

“ It may make it a little easier for you to under¬ 
stand, Spencer, if I show you the trap that Nature 
got herself into. In the early part of the Miocene 
we find seven different types of primitive masto¬ 
dons, four types with their grinding teeth possess¬ 
ing four ridges, and known as Tetralophodon, and 
three with their molars possessing three transverse 
crests, known as Trilophodon. We will concern 
ourselves only with one of the latter species, who 
is better known as Tetrabelodon. 

“ That fellow was worth looking at. He was 
about as big as a good-sized cart-horse, though, in 
the next epoch, some of his descendants grew to 
even larger size, as big as a small Indian elephant 
of to-day. In him, for the first time, the trunk be¬ 
came a real trunk. The neck of Tetrabelodon was 
a good deal longer than that of modern elephants, 
and his head was sloping. He had four tusks-” 

“ Four, Father? ” 



70 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


“ Four very representative tusks. Those of the 
upper jaw—which have developed into the tusks 
of the modern elephant—were the longer of the 
two, but they did not project as far as the two 
straight tusks of the lower jaw. This lower jaw 
was of unconscionable length and there was a 
strong chin which stood out still farther. Because 
of this length of lower jaw, the short lower tusks 
stood out in advance of the long upper tusks. 

“ This device, however, was not very practical. 
Since the trunk and the chin were developing at 
the same time, it is clear that they must have been 
getting in each other’s way. One of the two had 
to go. Which would be the better? Nature, as 
usual, tried both ways. 

“ Let us take, first, the type in which the plan 
did not work. In the next division of the Tertiary 
Period, known as the Pliocene or More-Recent- 
Modern-Animals Epoch, there developed a queer 
beast called the Dinotherium. In the Tetrabelo- 
don, Nature had found out two things. The first 
was that four tusks were too many; the second was 
that a long trunk and long chin got in each other’s 
way. 

“ So, as an experiment, Nature developed the 
lower two tusks, in the Dinotherium, and dropped 



Courtesy of Herbert & Daniel Co. Drawn by Alice B. Woodward. 

Tetralobedon. 

In the far-off days when the elephant had four tusks 



Courtesy of Herbert & Daniel Co. Drawn by Alice />. Woodward. 

Dinotherium. 

Nature’s attempt to put the elephant’s tusks in the lower jaw, 

instead of in the upper one. 


4 





A HAIRY MONSTER 


71 


the upper two. So far, so good. But there was 
still the long lower jaw there to embarrass the 
trunk. Nature was in a hurry, and, instead of 
letting the long lower jaw diminish, little by little, 
she gave the end of it a downward twist, so that 
the end of the jaw was at right angles to the be¬ 
ginning. This changed the direction of the tusks 
of the lower jaw, which had projected straight in 
front, and turned them into downward and inward. 
If you can imagine a walrus with his tusks coming 
from his lower jaw, and the jaw twisted down to 
accommodate the setting of the tusks, you’ll get 
the idea. 

“ With the lower chin out of the way, there was 
plenty of room for the trunk to develop; this trunk 
development, in turn, produced a straightening of 
the angle of the skull. For some reason or another 
—we do not quite know why—this device proved 
unsatisfactory. The Dinotherium lingered on for 
half a million years or so, and then died out, leav¬ 
ing no descendants.” 

“ There’s nothing resembling a Dinothere to¬ 
day? ” 

“ Nothing. None of them lived beyond the 
Pliocene Epoch.” 

“ But the mastodons lived until modern times, 


72 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

didn’t they? I’ve heard you speak of an American 
mastodon.” 

“ You may have heard me speak of an American 
Bear-Hippopotamus ( Amblypoda ) or an American 
Giraffe-Camel ( Altecamelus ) but that isn’t to say 
that were modern! You didn’t imagine that 
Columbus found mastodons roaming around, did 
you? ” 

“ No, Father, of course not! But didn’t they last 
as long as the mammoths? ” 

“ Probably not quite so long, though there seems 
some reason to believe that the American Mastodon 
lived until the appearance of Man. Mastodons 
were as common in America, during the last division 
of the Tertiary Period,—which is known as the 
Pleistocene or Most-Recent-Modern-Animals Epoch 
—as mammoths were common in Siberia. They 
must have been as numerous in pre-Glacial times 
as the buffalo in post-Glacial. At Big Bone Lick, 
Kentucky, the remains of mastodons far outnumber 
those of the Columbian Mammoth, being five times 
as numerous as the mammoth and a hundred times 
as numerous as the bison.” 

“ Did they look very different from the mam¬ 
moth? ” 

“ Quite a good deal. The mastodon had a low 


A HAIRY MONSTER 


73 


sloping forehead, short massive limbs, it was enor¬ 
mously broad at the back, and, while of good 
weight, it never reached ten feet in height. The 
chin was longer than that of the mammoth, a sign 
of its earlier origin. The tusks were of good size, 
averaging eight feet long, with a few specimens 
touching ten feet, and they did not curl upward in 
the same way as those of the mammoth.” 

“ And there were American mammoths, too, 
then? ” 

“ Yes, two very different species. There was the 
Imperial Mammoth, which may bear comparison 
with the biggest of the True or Siberian Mam¬ 
moths, which we’re looking for, now; and the 
Columbian Mammoth, a slightly smaller animal. 
So, you see, Spencer, Nature tried out these three 
lines of Dinothere, Mastodon and Mammoth, in 
order to find out which was the best adapted to 
survive. 

“ I am speaking as though Nature were ‘ per¬ 
sonal/ now, just to make it easier for you to under¬ 
stand. As a matter of fact, the real cause of these 
changes and modifications is still under dispute, 
and may never be clearly understood. 

“ Dinothere was unsatisfactory, and mastodon 
and mammoth disappeared just about the time of 


74 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

the arrival of Man. We’ve still got the elephants 
to account for. 

“ I mentioned, a few minutes ago, that, in the 
Pliocene Epoch, there were two forms of a creature 
known as Euelaphas. One developed into the 
Southern Elephant of Europe, and the present In¬ 
dian elephant shows a relationship to this ancestor; 
the other developed into the Straight-Tusked Ele¬ 
phant, and, from him, the African Elephant sprang. 

“ There, Son, in a rough way, you have the 
gradual development and evolution of the ele¬ 
phants. But you must not suppose that elephants 
have stopped developing. There are certainly six 
different kinds of elephants in Africa—some author¬ 
ities name fourteen,—and there are certainly three 
in Asia, though some zoologists have raised this list 
to seven. Between the Congo dwarf elephant, the 
little water-elephant, the small-eared and domes¬ 
ticable Indian elephant, and the large-eared and 
savage African elephant, the differences are very 
great.” 

This description of the development of the Mas- 
todons, Mammoths and Elephants had been inter¬ 
rupted from time to time, as one or other small 
incident occurred to break the monotonous journey. 
Next day, Spencer returned to the charge, with fur- 


A HAIRY MONSTER 


75 


ther questions about elephants, and so on for the 
two days following. It was an ideal chance to 
learn, and Hunter Wolland was an authority on 
the subject, knowing it from the points of view 
both of the ivory-hunter and the scientific natu¬ 
ralist. By the end of the fourth day, Spencer had 
learned all about elephants that he could hold at 
one time. 

They had been paddling for about an hour, on 
the morning of the fifth day, when, at a turn of 
the stream, they saw before them the very pine 
copse, perched on the top of a cliff, which they had 
seen in the smoke-vision in the shaman’s hut. 

Although Spencer secretly had been expecting to 
find some of the witch-doctor’s magic come true, 
he was none the less amazed to see how exact the 
vision had been. 

“ Look, Father! ” he exclaimed. 

“ Incredible! ” 

“ Why, it’s exact! ” 

“ I can even recognize individual trees.” 

“ And if there’s a little stream on the other side, 
Father, are you going up it? ” 

“ Isn’t that precisely what we’ve come for? ” 

Spencer’s heart gave a quick pit-a-pat. There 
was more than astonishment in his feelings. There 


76 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


was fear, also. He remembered the ending of that 
dream-adventure, and, should the end prove as 
true as the beginning, how were their lives to be 
saved? 

The shaman had not led them astray. No sooner 
had they passed the copse and turned a projecting 
point, than they saw directly before them, as they 
had seen in the vision, the mouth of a little tribu¬ 
tary stream with a swift current. The main river 
bent away and took a wide sweep to the west¬ 
ward. 

There was no need to give instruction to the 
canoeman. Evidently he had received his orders 
from the shaman. Without any hesitation, he 
turned up-stream and paddled valiantly against 
the current for more than an hour. Then, without 
any sign to the Americans, he made for the shore. 
Neither Spencer nor his father said a word. Both 
recognized the exact spot where, in the magic 
prophecy, they had seen themselves leave the little 
skin baidara. 

Still silent, they left the boat, shouldered camera 
and guns, climbed up the bank and began to walk 
along the bank of the stream. There was some¬ 
thing peculiarly eerie and frightening in the feel¬ 
ing that they were repeating in actuality what they 


A HAIRY MONSTER 77 

had seen themselves doing in a dream. It was like 
being one’s own ghost. 

Moreover, just as in the vision, Hunter Wol- 
land carried the “ elephant gun,” a magazine rifle 
(Mauser .311 bore), while Spencer had nothing but 
a double-barrelled shotgun. Since the Americans 
had not come big-game shooting, but only to find 
mammoths that had been dead tens or hundreds of 
thousands of years ago, they had not brought a 
battery of weapons. 

As before, in the shadows on the smoke, they saw 
the valley opening before them, a mile long, and 
with some fifty yards of dry bottom land on either 
side of the river. Spencer dared not glance at his 
father to see if he were looking, and it was with a 
decided effort of the will that he steeled his nerves 
to raise his eyes and fix them on the landscape 
ahead. 

Below them, some four hundred yards away, his 
back half-hidden by the high clay bank, and his 
great head with its tremendous curly tusks slightly 
bent forward toward a clump of shrub, stood the 
great hairy Mammoth! 


CHAPTER V 


A SPLENDID FIND 

By what strange magical powers could the sha¬ 
man have known beforehand, have seen in all de¬ 
tails, what was going to happen? 

Even while Spencer gazed, dumfounded, at the 
dark and bulky form of the mammoth, outlined 
against the cliff, his father set off straightway down 
the bank. He had reached the level of the valley 
below before the boy realized that he was alone. 

Ashamed of his laggardliness—which was due 
more to amazement than to timidity—Spencer 
went down the bank with a rush. Again—the 
thing was so bewildering as to pass beyond the 
bounds of mere marvel—again he caught the knee 
of his trousers in a sharp projecting root. This 
minor incident, almost more than all others, 
numbed his sense of surprise. Before, he had only 
felt that anything might happen; now, he felt that 
the events which had been foreseen must happen. 

By the time that he had reached the valley, he 
had to run in order to catch up with his father. 

They came nearer and nearer to the mammoth. 

When within a couple of hundred yards, or so, 

78 


A SPLENDID FIND 79 

Spencer distinctly saw the huge beast slowly turn 
its head and face them. 

Convinced that the vision which he had seen in 
the shaman’s hut was to be fulfilled at every point, 
he waited for his father to shoot, but The Hunter 
did not make any move to raise his rifle. Almost 
in panic, and wishing to forestall the mammoth’s 
charge, which, in the vision, had seemed so menac¬ 
ing, Spencer threw his shotgun to the shoulder. 

At the very instant of firing, his father’s hand 
brusquely knocked the barrel aside. 

“ Nonsense! ” he said, though his voice was none 
too steady. “ Get hold of yourself, Spencer! Keep 
a grip on your nerves. The mammoth is dead. It 
must be dead.” 

“ But I saw it move-” 

“ The mammoth is dead,” The Hunter inter¬ 
rupted with an over-persistence, “ although I’ll 
admit that I thought I saw the beast move, too. 
I could swear that I saw it move. But I should be 
swearing to an illusion. It must be an illusion. 
Unconsciously, we are deceiving ourselves. Noth¬ 
ing is so self-infectious as fear, or as wonder. The 
mammoth is dead. It must be dead.” 

“ But-” 

“ It is dead, I tell you! ” 




80 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

The Hunter’s tone was far from being that of a 
man sure of himself. It was quite clear that he 
was repeating these bald phrases of common sense 
almost as though they had the character of a charm. 
Wise in the ways of psychology, he held his mind 
hard down to bare matter-of-fact statements. 
Moreover, he walked forward doggedly, if slowly. 

“ It’s got its eyes open! It’s looking at us, 
Father! ” 

“ It is dead. Stone dead. Thousands of years 
dead. Dead. Dead! Keep that well in mind, 
Son; hang on to that idea as you would to a plank 
if you were drowning. Don’t let your good judg¬ 
ment go under. Our senses may fool us, Spencer, 
all of them. But Reason deals with facts and my 
reason tells me that the beast is dead.” 

Silenced, but not convinced, Spencer followed, in 
spite of cold shivers and a pronounced trembling of 
the knees. But he could not contain himself. 

“ Father! ” 

“ Wen? ” 

“ The trunk is curling upward, just as it did, be¬ 
fore! ” 

The Hunter halted, pulled his watch from his 
pocket, opened the hunting case, and held it out to 
the boy. 


A SPLENDID FIND 81 

“ Keep your eyes on the second-hand, Spencer,” 
he said, abruptly. “Do what I tell you! Don’t 
raise your eyes until a full minute has passed! ” 

The boy obeyed, although that minute seemed to 
him at least an hour long. 

“Now, look up! Tell me, has the mammoth’s 
trunk moved? ” 

•“ No .” 

“ Fix your eyes on the trunk, again! ” 

“It is moving!” cried Spencer, in renewed 
alarm. 

“ I see it moving, too. But I know that it is not 
so. I know that it cannot be so. Self-deception is 
a potent cause of error, into which even the wisest 
and most reasonable people may fall. 

“ Remember this, Son! Our eyes only convey an 
impression to the brain, but if that brain has previ¬ 
ously been impressed with an expectation more 
vivid than the impression which is given by actual 
observation, the brain will be inevitably stimulated 
by the eyes not to see what is really there but to 
see only those things which agree with the vision 
that the brain has previously absorbed. 

“ That is what is happening to us both, now. In 
spite of our reason, our brains are still under the 
influence of that hypnotic suggestion given us in 


82 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

the shaman’s hut, and we simply cannot help see¬ 
ing wrongly what we see now.” 

“ You think it’s that? ” 

“ I am sure of it. All conjuring tricks and all 
processes of magic—whether genuine or no—are 
based on the principle that unconsciously we regard 
as a probable happening a thing which is expected. 
In this case, Son, our eyes are not deceiving us, 
or at least I think not—I believe there is a mam¬ 
moth, there—but our brains are doing so. 

“ We are not to blame for being deceived, Spen¬ 
cer. On the contrary, there are cases where the 
ability to deceive oneself is as much a sign of 
strength as it is of weakness. Skepticism is always 
the mark of a small mind. It is because we have 
cause to trust our reason that we give it so much 
play, but, since we cannot know all things, it fol¬ 
lows that we may be reasoning out our conclusions 
from an insufficient number of facts. The logic 
may be sound, but if the premises are false, so will 
the results be. 

“ Then, there is another thing, too. We have to 
consider the sense of strain. Nerves which are too 
tightly stretched may play us any number of tricks. 
Only let our emotions or our nerves be put to a 
sufficient strain and we need not be surprised to 



A SPLENDID FIND 83 

see, in some external object, things or acts which 
are not really there, especially if there is an uncon¬ 
scious desire to supply them.” 

“ How, Father? I don’t quite see! ” 

“ I will give you an illustration, in the form of 
an experiment which was carried out by the famous 
Wisconsin psychologist, Joseph Jastrow. It was 
just about the time when there was a great deal of 
discussion as to whether the faint dots on the 
planet Mars as seen by the telescope and recorded 
by the telescopic camera were or were not oases 
along a line of canals. 

“ Upon a large sheet of paper, Jastrow inked a 
number of large dots, entirely at haphazard. He 
pinned this paper on the blackboard. Then he 
called in a dozen members of one of the younger 
classes, told them that these dots represented the 
canals in Mars and bade them draw the lines of 
those canals as they saw them. The children did 
so. Of the twelve, only two children saw the sheet 
of paper as containing an array of unrelated dots. 

“ Then he called in another dozen children, and, 
with the same diagram, he asked them to try to 
draw the outlines of the animal which was partly 
dotted on the paper pinned on the blackboard. 
Not one of the children failed to see an animal in 


84 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

those scattered dots, but no two of the children’s 
drawings were alike. To another group, the sug¬ 
gestion of a bouquet of flowers was given, with the 
same result, and so on. The eyes of the children 
saw the dots, but the suggestion of canals, of an 
animal, or of flowers having been given them, they 
honestly saw in those scattered dots the semblance 
of what a suggestion had bidden them see.” 

He broke off suddenly. 

“ Spencer, has the mammoth moved?” 

The boy looked up with a start and turned, for 
his father had moved slightly so that, during the 
conversation, Spencer’s back was toward the mam¬ 
moth. 

“ No, Father.” 

“You see, Son! I have deliberately forced you 
to follow my talk, these five minutes or more, with¬ 
out thinking of the mammoth, and you can see for 
yourself that the beast has not seemed to move.” 

“Yet, if I look at it,” replied Spencer, staring, 
“ it does seem to move! ” 

“ Pure illusion! The longer you look, the more 
you will see there, what is not there to see. Come, 
we will go forward. But, as you go, repeat con¬ 
stantly to yourself that the mammoth is dead! ” 

They approached closer. 


A SPLENDID FIND 85 

A shifting whiff of wind brought a very charac¬ 
teristic odor to their nostrils. 

“ You smell that, Spencer? ” 

“ Yes. It’s like something decaying.” 

“ Small wonder! The mammoth is dead, it has 
been dead for thousands of years. And this is sum¬ 
mer-time. Do you understand? ” 

“ It’s as dead as all that! ” 

The two Americans were coming closer, now. 
The smell grew stronger. The illusion of lifelike¬ 
ness began to disappear. When fairly near, Spen¬ 
cer stopped and gazed calmly at the enormous 
beast. His fear was gone. 

“ My word,” he said, with a sigh of relief, “ if 
the natives felt as I did, no wonder they ran! ” 

“ If you had been alone, Son, I believe you would 
have run, too.” 

“ I certainly should! ’ It looks so real! ” 

“ That is the most curious part of it. Why has 
the animal not been torn to pieces by the wolves? ” 
queried his father. “ It is that which has puzzled 
me most. Ah, I see,” he added, as they came closer. 

The mammoth, truly, was in a most astonishing 
position. Its fore legs were firmly planted on a 
rock, but the rump and the hind legs were still em¬ 
bedded in the clay-ice bank of the river and were 


86 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

frozen in. The rock on which the fore legs rested 
was not a ledge, but a huge boulder. 

This boulder had resisted erosion, and the river, 
therefore, had cut a channel on both sides of the 
rock, so that the body of the mammoth formed a 
natural arch. The obstruction to the stream had 
narrowed the bed, and the narrowing had produced 
a rapids, which sent the water foaming past the 
boulder at a whirling speed. The roar of the rapids 
might easily have been taken by a superstitious 
Tungus for the roaring of an animal. 

“ You see, Spencer,” his father pointed out, “ the 
river is too wide for any animal to jump; the cur¬ 
rent is far too rapid for any creature to swim. 
Neither from above or below can that boulder be 
reached. On the farther side, the cliff overhangs. 

“ You notice that the mammoth faces toward the 
north. This overhanging cliff has kept the rays of 
the sun from ever touching the monster, during the 
short but hot summers of this Arctic region. In 
winter, of course, it is frozen hard. That is why 
decay has not been more rapid. It is a chance in a 
million millions! No specimen so perfect as this 
has ever been found, not even the Beresovka Mam¬ 
moth. We shall be the envy of the whole scientific 
world! We will take photographs of it, Spencer, 


A SPLENDID FIND 87 

from every possible angle, and then we must return 
to the village at top speed.” 

“ What for, Father? ” 

“ For material to make a bridge, so that we can 
get to the rock—and that will not be an easy mat¬ 
ter, here. For ropes to hang over the cliff on which 
to attach a scaffolding from which to chop out the 
hinder quarters—a very long job and a difficult one; 
and, even when the mammoth is free, I shall have 
to devise a way to get it to this side. Fortunately 
this bank is lower than the level of the mammoth, 
so we may be able to slide it down. But where 
shall I find timbers, in this country of stunted trees, 
to support so tremendous a weight? ” 

Spencer was taken aback. He had not realized 
that the finding of the mammoth was only the 
beginning of the quest, not the end. 

“ We must get skins to make a comfortable hut,” 
his father went on, “ so that we can live right here 
while the work is proceeding. We must have large 
quantities of food. We must engage every native 
that we can lay hands on, either by threats or good 
pay, or both. We must procure all the sledges and 
all the horses that can be found within five hundred 
miles of here. We’ve got weeks of work before us, 
and this is already the beginning of September! ” 



88 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


“ Well, we’re not in any hurry to get home, are 
we? ” 

“ We’re in a hurry to get away from here, though! 
I don’t want to abandon my find for an entire win¬ 
ter; there wouldn’t be much left of it, when we 
came back in the spring.” 

“ Why abandon it? ” 

“ Because of the cold. We’ll be able to endure 
the temperature of October, but, even with heavy 
furs, Spencer, you and I could not live here later 
than the middle of November, at latest. Remem¬ 
ber, this part of the world is colder than the Arctic 
Ocean, colder than the North Pole itself. Only the 
plateaus of Greenland can compare with it, and, on 
those plateaus, neither man nor beast exists.” 

The photos taken, father and son hurried to the 
boat. A heavy bribe to the canoeman took them 
up the river to the village at the same speed as they 
had come down, but five days passed on the jour¬ 
ney, none the less. 

On the instant of their arrival, Hunter Wol- 
land woke into frenzied action. This was the first 
time that Spencer has seen his father at work in 
the field, and he realized why the Detroit Museum 
had chosen him. He was an incomparable leader. 
He had the gift of instilling workers with the same 


A SPLENDID FIND 


89 


enthusiasm as he possessed himself, he forgot noth¬ 
ing, he saw everything, and his long experience both 
as a big-game hunter and as the head of scientific 
expeditions had taught him the one invaluable rule 
that it is not hurry which begets speed, but organ¬ 
ization, forethought, and the avoidance of having to 
do anything twice. 

The fame of the shaman grew mighty in the land, 
for the news of the authenticity of his magic vision 
spread far and wide. At The Hunter’s suggestion, 
on promise of a further gift of ammunition and the 
value of the mammoth’s tusks, he agreed to declare 
that the white men had broken the magic spell and 
that the mammoth would wander alive no more, 
but that, to free the region from being haunted, all 
the natives must help the Americans to take the 
carcass away. The man who refused to help, de¬ 
clared the shaman, would be haunted, himself. 
This superstitious fear, added to the promise of 
higher wages than they had ever known, attracted 
natives from every quarter. 

In less than two weeks from the finding of the 
mammoth, Spencer and his father were back in the 
little valley, with thirty natives at their back, ten 
boat-loads of provisions, and the whole country was 
being scoured for more workmen, for timber, for 


90 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


horses and sledges, for the thousand-and-one things 
necessary to such a great enterprise. How difficult 
a task, Spencer did not realize in the least until it 
was begun. Then, indeed, the boy doubted if the 
mammoth would ever reach Detroit. 

The cliff, in which the mammoth was embedded, 
was 110 feet high, and the body of the mammoth 
was some twenty feet above the level of the river 
at the top of the rapids. The upper stratum of 
earth and moss was a couple of feet thick. Below 
that came six feet of loam, frozen solid, and, below 
that, for eight feet, a layer of earth, moss and loam, 
mixed with stones, roots, and pieces of wood, inter¬ 
mingled with which were lamellar plates of ice, six 
inches thick. Below all this, for nearly a hundred 
feet, a vertical wall of brown-stained ice. 

Not the smallest difficulty was the lack of tools 
for so large a number of workmen, and hacking 
away the ice-cliff from a swinging scaffolding with 
pickaxes of bone, in the endeavor to free the hinder 
quarters of the mammoth, was a tantalizingly slow 
piece of work. As more and more natives came to 
the scene, the Professor set them all at some task. 
There was labor enough for all. 

No timbers strong enough to support such a 
tremendous weight could be found in the country, 


A SPLENDID FIND 


91 


and, of course, it was useles to try to find a beam 
of even one-fifth of the desired length. It was 
necessary to splice tree-trunk to tree-trunk, binding 
them together with strips of rawhide, and to 
strengthen all this construction with mammoth 
ribs, lashed together. These huge ribs were taken 
from a point eighty miles to the northward, where 
ivory hunters had found a mammoth “ cemetery ” 
and had despoiled the tusks. The ribs had no 
market value, and so had been left there. 

The upper end of this bridge was anchored to the 
brink of the cliff, above, and, besides, it was swung 
to huge overhead cables which Spencer had secured 
from a former Siberian convict settlement four hun¬ 
dred miles to the southward, whither he had gone 
with Ivan. This quadruple suspension cable also 
was anchored to the cliff above and stretched as 
taut as possible to the ground below, near the tents. 

By the time that Spencer returned from his visit 
to the penal settlement, it had become so piercingly 
cold that the Americans could no longer live in the 
skin tents. The bitterness of the nights was in¬ 
tense. The hours of sunshine diminished alarm¬ 
ingly, and the sun, at its highest, was but at a low 
angle with the horizon. Yet the work must go on. 
All the natives save the bridge-builders and those 


92 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


who were chipping out the ice-cliff were set toiling 
to build a house that could be warmed. October 
was well advanced before it was completed. 

The very day after the house was finished, after 
Spencer had enjoyed his first warm sleep for a 
month, a cry arose from the men at work on the 
scaffolding that the mammoth was almost ready to 
break free. All the natives, save one or two of the 
hardiest, who had acted as foremen, scrambled 
down out of the way. There was no telling what 
might happen. 

This was the crucial moment! On the happen¬ 
ings of the next few minutes depended the success 
or failure of the whole expedition. On the strength 
of the suspension bridge—it was really far more a 
slide than a bridge—everything depended, and what 
confidence could be put on half-rotten cables, on 
tree-trunks roughly spliced together with rawhide, 
and on mammoth ribs, perhaps thousands and 
thousands of years old? For several nights past, 
The Hunter had ordered the Tunguses to dash 
water from the river on the bridge. This, of course, 
froze as it fell. 

The slide itself, four tree-trunks in thickness and 
eighteen tree-trunks in width, had been built in the 
shape of an immense gutter. The curving sides 




A SPLENDID FIND 93 

were made of mammoth ribs—scores of them—set 
concave-wise, and now there was some three feet 
thickness of glare-ice over the mammoth ribs. 

The fore legs of the mammoth already rested on 
the slide, for the frozen beast had been braced up 
from below while the rock on which the fore legs had 
rested was blasted away by small charges of dyna¬ 
mite secured from the gold-mines several hundred 
miles to the southeastward. This had been done 
in order that the slide might be built underneath, 
for not only would it be impossible to improvise a 
tackle strong enough to lift the mammoth, but 
there was no means of knowing whether the carcass 
might not drop to pieces. 

It was to be feared, indeed, it was almost sure, 
that neither the bridge-slide itself nor the cables by 
which it was suspended were strong enough to sus¬ 
tain the whole weight of the mammoth, but The 
Hunter was not expecting it to do so. The slide 
had a steep slope, and, if it could stand up during 
the single moment of shock when the weight of the 
mammoth’s whole carcass should first come on it, 
all might be well, for, in sliding swiftly downward, 
the weight would not be more than a fraction of a 
second on any one spot of the construction. 

Beyond the lower end of the slide, water had also 


94 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

been carried from the river and poured on the 
ground, to make a sheet of ice eighty yards wide, 
extending to the opposite cliff. Owing to the slope 
of the ground, this sheet of ice—Spencer called it 
an ice rink and lamented loudly that he had not his 
skates with him—bore upward slightly, and it had 
been strewn with scrub. Thus, if all went well, 
the impetus of the huge carcass—weighing several 
tons—would send it sliding a long way over the 
ground ice, but the scrub would get pinched under 
the body and thus cause friction enough to stop it. 
Once the mammoth was fairly on solid ground, the 
carcass, despite its size, could be hauled by horses 
over the ice to any desired position, without too 
great difficulty. 

In spite of every precaution, the event came sud¬ 
denly. Almost without warning, the hind quarters 
of the mammoth broke away from the cliff. It 
seemed almost to leap outward. Unable to fall 
either to left or right by the sides of the scoop¬ 
shaped bridge, the hind end slewed a little side- 
wise, but the fore legs, frozen stiff, held the carcass 
almost upright. 

There was a fraction of a second of agonized sus¬ 
pense. Then, with a terrific cracking and snap¬ 
ping, it began to slide. 



A SPLENDID FIND 


95 


At that crucial instant, two of the four suspen¬ 
sion cables snapped as though they had been sew¬ 
ing-thread. The third held, for perhaps a second— 
not more; the fourth cable parted a second later. 
The whole bridge came down with a thundering 
crash. 

But those two seconds had been just enough. A 
weight of six tons, set on a steep ice slide, receives 
an enormous impetus and gravity operates instan¬ 
taneously. 

The upper end of the bridge split asunder as it 
fell, but it could fall no farther than the rock in 
midstream, and the loose construction of tree- 
trunks and mammoth-ribs was held rigid by the 
three-foot thickness of ice. It cracked, it broke, it 
lurched, it split, yet, in the very act of breaking into 
a welter of confusion, it held its form for a few 
seconds longer. Though almost level, it offered no 
hindrance to the forward plunge of the enormous 
frozen beast. 

The natives turned to flee in terror. 

At that very instant, Spencer realized once again 
the fantastic precision of the shaman’s vision. 

The huge mammoth, its tusks gleaming, the 
whites of its eyes showing, came plunging down 
upon him and his father as they stood on either 


96 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


side of the foot of the bridge-slide, in an agony^ of 
anticipation. 

The mammoth charged them, truly, but it was 
dead, thousands of years dead, just the same! 


CHAPTER VI 


« 


AN ARCTIC BLIZZARD 

Once more, in his ignorance and optimism, Spen¬ 
cer had supposed that the biggest part of the work 
was done when once the mammoth was fairly and 
squarely on dry land. He found himself wrong in 
that, grievously wrong. It was as impossible to 
transport that mammoth, whole, to Detroit, as it 
would have been to tell the thirty-thousand-years- 
dead beast to get up and walk there. 

“You mean,” he said incredulously, when his 
father had explained to him the next stage in the 
work, “ that we’ve got to skin that whole monster, 
to cut it up into little bits, and to take it to the 
States, that way? ” 

“ If you can suggest some feasible means of 

transporting a single mass of six tons of rotting 

flesh on a sledge a thousand miles to a rail-head, 

then over a few thousand miles of railway to a boat, 

then across the ocean, then half-way across another 

continent, keeping it strictly frozen all the time so 

that it doesn’t actually putrefy and fall to pieces, 

and, what’s more, if you can find me some method 

97 


98 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

of preventing the spread of disease all along the 
line, I’ll be infinitely obliged to you, my son.” 

“I suppose it would get bad; I hadn’t thought 
about that. It smells bad enough, now.” 

“ Nothing to the way it will smell, in a few days. 
Wait till it gets warmed up a bit! To begin with, 
we’ve got to put the carcass indoors.” 

“ What on earth for? ” 

“ In order to be able to work.” 

“ Oh, those Tungus chaps can stand the cold all 
right! ” 

“ Perhaps,” agreed The Hunter, dryly. “ But 
how do you propose to disarticulate a mammoth’s 
thigh, for example, with the flesh frozen so hard 
that it would turn the edge of a lumberman’s axe? 
How would you skin a hide, frozen so stiff that a 
chisel would hardly make a dent in it? ” 

“ You mean that you’ll have to thaw it all? ” 

“ How else? Frozen flesh is as hard as the 
toughest wood.” 

“ But you’ll have to roast it! To roast six tons 
at a time! You’d have to have a fire as big as a 
house! ” 

“ Not quite. But the mammoth will have to be 
thawed, bit by bit, part by part, before we can open 
it, take out the stomach, examine the contents, 


99 


AN ARCTIC BLIZZARD 

strip away flesh, tendons, and sinews in order to get 
at the bones, and all the rest of it.” 

“ Father! The smell! ” 

“ It will be vile, Spencer. I should say it will 
infect the air for ten miles around. But the job 
has to be done. One can’t abandon the richest 
paleontological find of modern times because of 
personal discomfort. Go back to the village and 
wait for me, there, if you think you can’t stand it.” 

Spencer fairly gasped with indignation. 

“ Me? Go? Show the white feather! I should 
say not! I’ll stick if I get so sick that I’ll not be 
able to eat for a month! ” 

It was a proud boast and a bold one, and, many a 
time in the succeeding month, Spencer was tempted 
to quit. The work was simply horrible, the smell 
abominable; so nauseating was the stench that men 
vomited, even during their sleep, and the natives 
were not immune. But the boy did not lack for 
grit, and he stuck by his father’s side, learning dis¬ 
section on a large scale. 

Toward the end of the month, when he had 
learned exactly how the bones, the strips of hide, 
the pieces of fur, and certain parts of the body—all 
rotting and ready to fall to pieces at a touch— 
should be packed for safe transport, his father put 


100 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

him in charge of a gang of men to superintend the 
packing. 

There, in the open, the smell was less disgusting 
than under the shed itself, but the cold and the 
dark were almost as great a trial. Daylight hours 
were short, and the low-angled sun gave little heat. 
Whale-oil and seal-oil lanterns, their sides im¬ 
provised from sheets of clear ice—which never 
melted, so great was the cold outside—enabled 
them to continue during the hours of darkness. A 
day shift and a night shift were kept continually 
on the job. 

In order that the work should be constantly 
superintended, the hours of sleep, both for Spencer 
and his father, were constantly interrupted. With 
little rest and less chance to retain his food, the boy 
began to grow weak. Though robust at the begin¬ 
ning of the month, he was skeleton-thin at the end 
of it. 

On October twenty-eighth, the first snow fell. 
Fortunately it was a light fall, but it served as a 
warning. Every day after that was a serious 
menace. 

It was on November tenth, six days before the 
date set for the start, that the Arctic winter first 
showed its icy teeth. There was little snow, little 




AN ARCTIC BLIZZARD 


101 


wind, but, about sunrise of that day, a low moan¬ 
ing sound began to boom over the tundra, like the 
regular throbbing beat of a distant gong. 

An hour later, the camp was half deserted. The 
Southern Tunguses and the Yakuts could not even 
be tempted by the double wages, yes, the triple 
wages which The Hunter offered them for every 
additional day. 

In this strait, the shaman showed himself a brave 
man and an honest one. Despite his age and 
feebleness, he came down to the camp, and, by 
sheer prestige, held the remaining workmen to their 
task. They feared the winter desperately, but they 
feared the shaman more. 

On the very date set for the start, thirty-five 
sledges, heavily loaded—most of them overloaded 
for ponies little accustomed to harness work—left 
the camp for the village and thence for the long 
overland journey to Yakutsk. 

Twelve sledges had already gone in advance, un¬ 
der Ivan. These did not carry mammoth remains, 
for Hunter Wolland obstinately refused to be 
separated from any part of his find. They were 
loaded down with fossil ivory. 

Natives from far and wide, hearing of the pres¬ 
ence of rich strangers, had brought tusks for pur- 


102 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


chase. Though the Americans had no more ready 
money, the Tungus sold the tusks at the regular 
market price to a perfect stranger, not knowing for 
certain if they would ever get their money, and 
knowing that, in any case, it could not reach them 
that winter. Honesty is taken for granted in the 
Northern Tungus country—beyond the Arctic 
Circle. 

At the entrance to the little valley, where they 
had first seen the mammoth, Spencer turned for a 
last look. Both the house and the great shed which 
had been built over the mammoth were gone. All 
had been dismantled. In addition to full pay, The 
Hunter had divided all the vast store of material 
which had been collected and had given it to the 
faithful Tunguses. This treasure of timber, of 
ropes, of tools and similar articles, to dwellers in 
that isolated region, was much more valuable than 
gold. 

The valley looked forlorn and abandoned, in con¬ 
trast with the feverish activity it had presented, 
only a few days earlier. Spencer had passed a ter¬ 
rible two months of hardship and discomfort there; 
yet, in a way, he was sorry to go. No other Ameri¬ 
can boy had ever had such an experience. 

“ So, it's ‘ good-bye ’ to that! ” he said to his 


AN ARCTIC BLIZZARD 


103 


father, as they turned the corner of the pine copse 
on the cliff, and the few remaining trees hid the 
valley from sight. “ It's true that we haven't 
actually seen a living mammoth, but I don't be¬ 
lieve that anybody in modern times has ever come 
closer to it. I almost feel as if I had seen one! " 

“ In all the history of mammoth-hunting, no one 
has ever been so fortunate as we have," agreed his 
father. “ If we only succeed in getting everything 
home safely, I will have little more to ask for." 

“ Oh, I have, Father! " 

“ So? What have you got in mind, I’d like to 
know? ” 

“ Well, now that I’ve really had all I want of 
mammoths, I'd like to see some real living ele¬ 
phants in their native haunts; African ones, by 
preference, since you say they are the biggest." 

“ Their charges might be a bit more dangerous, 
Son! " 

“ Perhaps. But they wouldn't smell as much! " 

“ No, there is some consolation in that. Well, 
Spencer, there’s no saying; you might get a chance. 
Since the Detroit Museum is going to have the 
finest mammoth in the world, bar none, the Trus¬ 
tees might be persuaded to build that Elephant 
Hall I once urged them to do, and that will call 


104 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

for a special collection. The plan was more or less 
in the air when we left. 

“You see, Son, thanks to those twelve sledge- 
loads of fossil ivory which Ivan is looking after, 
and which the Museum can sell at an enormous 
profit on the price I agreed to pay for it, this ex¬ 
pedition will not have cost its backers a single cent. 
They may even be in pocket by it. 

“ In that case, I’m almost sure that the Trustees 
would be willing to put the grant at my disposal 
again. I should like, above all things, to go to 
Africa and do a little elephant-hunting again, not 
only for the sake of old times, but also because 
there are quite a number of scientific problems to 
be worked out. One thing at least is sure, Son, 
there would be little danger of frost-bite there! ” 

“ You’d take me along, Father, wouldn’t you? ” 

“ Very willingly, if you would care to come, and 
if you can learn to be a real big-game shot. African 
elephants are dangerous. I may as well tell you, 
now, Spencer, that I think you’ve done yourself 
proud on this trip. The quick w^ay you picked up 
the Yakut and Tungus languages was most credit¬ 
able, and it was, and still is, exceedingly useful. 
Not everybody has the gift of mastering native 
languages, and you seem to possess it naturally. 


105 


AN ARCTIC BLIZZARD 

“ Then, too, though I doubt if you’ve been able 
to keep down many meals, during the last month, 
because of living night and day in an atmosphere 
of putridity, you haven’t lost either your temper 
or your nerve. It’s very hard to keep going 
steadily, with one’s stomach in open rebellion. 
You’ve made an exceedingly good record, my 
boy! ” 

Spencer almost burst with pride at these words, 
for his father was usually very scant of praise. 
Flushed with pleasure, he hurried forward on his 
stocky Tungus pony, to keep the leading teams 
whipped up to their work. The Hunter acted as 
rear-guard, in order to prevent any laggards from 
dropping behind. 

There was little time for conversation, for thirty- 
five sledges take a good deal of handling, if speed is 
to be made. Tungus drivers are naturally talk¬ 
ative, and will stop for a chat on any excuse, or 
none. Tungus ponies, too, though exceedingly 
tough and hardy, and used to enormously long jour¬ 
neys, are inclined to a lazy pace. 

Every hour, now, must be made to count. The 
expedition was far above the Arctic Circle, and the 
middle of November had passed. The going over 
the lumpy frozen tundra was slow and hard. It 


106 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


took the caravan of sledges eight days to reach the 
village, with their heavy loads. 

The shaman looked grave at the lateness of their 
coming. He warned them that the first Arctic 
blizzard—generally one of the worst of the entire 
winter, and which is due in that region during the 
first two weeks of November—could not hold off 
much longer. Indeed, the weather signs were 
menacing. 

The full of the moon had passed, and the shaman 
could not be induced to stir out of his hut, though 
The Hunter would have given him almost any price 
to accompany them, so great was the medicine¬ 
man’s power over his men. 

“ One thing I say,” advised the shaman. “ Do 
not stop in this village to-night. Go on; go on! 
Even if the ponies are tired, go on; they will endure 
more travel than you think, if you feed them well. 
They will not fail you till they drop dead. Go on! 
Do not stop for meals, or, certainly, not more than 
once. Go on night and day, if you can! In fifty 
hours from here you should reach the Kusinensk 
Forest. 

“ You must reach it! If the blizzard catch you 
before you get to the forest, then other white men 
will come, some day, and dig your bodies out of 


AN ARCTIC BLIZZARD 


107 


the snow and ice, just as you have dug the body 
of the ‘ giant rat/ 

“ If you reach the forest, you are safe. The 
ponies can feed on pine-needles. You can find shel¬ 
ter from the wind and the driving snow, and you 
will be wise to make shelters. The blizzard will 
last five days. I have already sent a man to set up 
sticks to mark the way, if the first snow comes to¬ 
night, as it may. It will come very soon. ‘ It is 
the hour when a man goes on a journey/ ” he 
added, using a Northern expression of farewell. 

Spencer translated this to his father with com¬ 
parative ease, for he had spoken little else but 
Tungus during the last month at the camp. 

“ Ask him if he will show us, on the smoke, 
whether we will get to the forest? ” The Hunter 
asked, anxious to add to his ethnological study of 
Siberian native customs. 

“ You do not have the time to wait! ” the shaman 
answered impatiently. “You do not understand. 
It is to go! Go on! ‘ It is the hour when a man 
goes on a journey ’ ! ” 

Remembering their previous experience of the 
precision of the shaman’s foreknowledge, The 
Hunter did not linger. Spencer’s shouted orders 
soon summoned the scatterers. The half-unhar- 


108 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

nessed horses were hitched up again, the sledge- 
drivers mustered in haste, and, ten minutes later, 
the mammoth caravan was in motion. 

This time, there was little need to urge the men 
on. A word from the shaman to Tapchuv, the chief 
driver, had been enough, and the prophecy that the 
November blizzard might catch them on the way, if 
they did not hurry, gave grim authority to the 
witch-doctor’s orders. 

Beyond the village, there was a faint track, 
barely visible to the two Americans, but which was 
almost a highroad to the Tungus sledge-drivers 
and to the ponies. The wind was not high, but the 
temperature was piercing, just 50° below zero. 
(More than 80° below has been recorded in this 
region.) Even though wrapped up to the eyes in 
furs, as were both Spencer and his father, the cold 
was numbing. 

“ Young Master, you would be wise to go back 
to your father and talk!” said Tapchuv. “ The 
inside-of-head freezes in this cold.” 

Then, for the first time, the boy noticed that 
every alternate sledge-driver had abandoned his 
post and was sitting beside the driver of the sledge 
behind him, and all were chattering continuously. 

He rode back to report this to his father. 


AN ARCTIC BLIZZARD 


109 


“ Ah, I had forgotten that, for the moment/’ The 
Hunter declared. “ Tapchuv is perfectly right. 
Frost—such a frost as this—can get into the brain, 
and brain-frost is one of the chief causes why men 
who are caught, alone, in blizzards or periods of 
intense cold, often die or go mad. Death by ex¬ 
posure is not always due to the freezing of the 
body; more often it is due to the fact that the 
brain becomes numbed and that the will is unable 
to force the body to its work. 

“ Tapchuv’s advice is good. Keep beside me, 
Son, and if you begin to feel your mind becoming 
heavy and stupid, or if you are conscious of any 
derangement of your sense impressions—especially 
if your eyes seem to be playing you tricks—start up 
a conversation. It will not do for either of us to get 
frost-struck.” 

They rode on at a steady pace, through the bril¬ 
liantly star-lit night, to the accompaniment of the 
almost ceaseless chatter of the Tungus sledge- 
drivers. They went on without a single halt until 
ten o’clock in the morning, when the sun first edged 
itself crab-wise along the horizon, rather than rose. 
Spencer was beside himself in amazement at the 
ponies’ endurance. How could the shaggy little 
animals endure such a gruelling test? 


110 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

An hour later, when the sun had succeeded in 
dragging its whole disc clear of the horizon, and 
was beginning to emit a faint heat, a short halt was 
made. The ponies were unharnessed and fed 
copiously. The sledge-drivers hastily swallowed a 
few morsels of food and lay down in their furs to 
sleep. Tapchuv allowed them no more than an 
hour and a half of rest. He remained awake, him¬ 
self, and made two cauldrons of scalding hot sweet 
tea. Each man, on being awakened, swallowed a 
pint of the almost boiling liquid. In less than two 
hours, the teams were again moving. 

The sunset, or, rather, the extended twilight, had 
an ominous appearance. A watery canary-yellow 
band extended above the horizon for several de¬ 
grees, sharply cut off at the top, as though with a 
knife. Without any gradation whatever, a pale 
whitish-green sky rose to the zenith, darkening into 
a sombre green in the east. There was no blue at 
all. 

As the twilight faded away with Arctic slowness, 
and the stars appeared, it was evident to the most 
inexperienced eye that the weather was brewing 
trouble. The stars were clear, pretematurally 
clear, and, instead of twinkling in friendly wise, it 
seemed to Spencer that their sparkles were maii- 


AN ARCTIC BLIZZARD 


111 


cious. Arcturus, the first-magnitude star of the 
constellation Bofites, flashed at them as redly as 
though it were the planet Mars; Capella’s brilliant 
whiteness was like a glittering eye; and the blue 
glint in Vega’s beams gave it a ghostly radiance. 

The air was tense and vibrant. A light breeze 
sneaked over the tundra moss, scarcely rising more 
than a couple of feet above the ground; in com¬ 
parison with the deadly tang of the air, this 
ground-wind seemed almost warm, although it was 
blowing over a thousand miles of frozen ground. 

By midnight, the ponies were almost done. Save 
for two hours’ rest, they had been driven at a lum¬ 
bering but uninterrupted trot for thirty hours. 
They stumbled continually, and, once or twice, a 
pony fell in the traces. But the Tungus sledge- 
drivers—usually so considerate to their beasts— 
were merciless. The Hunter, with true American 
humanitarianism for animals, wanted to call a halt, 
several times, for the beasts’ sake. Tapchuv re¬ 
sisted stoutly, and every Tungus in the party was 
of his mind. They went on. 

A couple of hours later, there came a change in 
the night sky. The sharpness of the icy cold di¬ 
minished. A streaky veil came over the waning 
moon and dimmed the over-glittering stars. The 


112 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


atmosphere lost all its crispness and became chill 
and humid. A wind—more like a steady current 
than a storm-wind—came down from the north. 

Then, suddenly and silently, fifty yards to the 
left of the sledge caravan, appeared a huddled mass 
of animals, running low and swiftly, their noses 
close to the ground, their tails stretched out. 

“ Wolves! A pack of wolves! ” 

Spencer reached for his gun, strung to the sad¬ 
dle. 

The precaution was needless. 

The wolves, despite the smell of horse-flesh, their 
favorite food, paid no heed to the caravan. At a 
long, steady lope which nearly approached their 
hunting speed, they overtook and passed the 
sledges as though they had neither seen nor smelt 
ponies nor men. 

The boy spurred up to the chief driver. 

“ Did you see the wolves? ” 

“ Yes, Young Master.” 

“ Do you suppose they will be waiting for us, 
somewhere along the road? Had we better unpack 
and get the guns out? ” 

“ No, Young Master, there is no need. The 
wolves have gone on to the forest. They will be 
there in time. They know better than to delay, to 


AN ARCTIC BLIZZARD 113 

attack us even though starving. They will not 
risk what is behind them.” 

“ What? ” 

“ You have not looked, Young Master? ” 

“ No! ” 

Huddled in his furs, nothing but his nose show¬ 
ing—and even that protected by the fringe of fox- 
fur sticking out from the edges of his hood, the 
hairs almost touching—Spencer had not turned in 
his saddle for the last two hours back. Facing the 
south, the cold was rigorous enough, but the light 
wind which had arisen from the north at the time 
of the dimming of the stars was not one that any 
man would face willingly. 

At Tapchuv’s question, the boy half turned in 
his saddle. 

His first sensation was that he had received a 
charge of bird-shot full in the face. Yet no snow 
was flying. There was, however, a curious glint in 
the air, as though he were looking through water. 

In a moment, the boy saw what it was. The 
humid, moist air had frozen, it had crystallized into 
long, floating splinter-like ice needles, driven, like 
Lilliputian arrows, by the wind. Beyond, on the 
northeastern horizon, the sombre green of the sky 
had taken on a milky tinge. 


114 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


The boy whirled back on his seat, glad to face the 
south again, gasping. There was no need for him to 
ask if this were a premonition of the coming bliz¬ 
zard. He knew! 

“ How long before it strikes, Tapchuv? ” 

“At once? Soon? Later? Who can tell? But 
it will come before sunrise! ” 

“ How far are we still from the forest? ” 

“ Thirty versts, Young Master.” 

Twenty miles to go, yet, and the blizzard at their 
heels! The boy remembered the shaman’s grim 
suggestion that they would be buried alive and 
frozen, if the storm caught them. 

At the outside, the ponies were not making more 
than six or seven miles an hour. Could they reach 
the haven? It was well that the packages of mam¬ 
moth hide, of bones, and of trophies were well 
roped with rawhide, for there would be no time to 
refasten them now, if any bundle should work loose. 
If any one should fall, it must be lost, and the 
mammoth would not be complete; if any one 
should be lost, it would be Spencer’s fault, for he 
had superintended all the packing. 

Spencer dropped back to his father’s side, and 
told what Tapchuv had said. 

“ I know,” said The Hunter. “ I’ve had some ex- 


115 


AN ARCTIC BLIZZARD 

perience with Canadian blizzards, and I struck 
some deadly storms when walrus-hunting on the 
North Labrador shore. But that a pack of hungry 
wolves should pass a caravan with more than sev¬ 
enty ponies, and not so much as even look at them, 
alarms me more than anything Tapchuv can say. 
And twenty miles is still a long way.” 

He pointed again to the left. 

“More wolves, Spencer! When Arctic wolves 
flee before a blizzard, what chance would we have? 
I wish we were there! ” 

“ You’re afraid we shall never reach the forest, 
Father? ” 

“ It is death for every one of us, if we don’t! ” 

For half an hour they rode along, silently. Even 
the Tungus drivers no longer chattered. There was 
no longer any fear of brain-frost, for the feeling of 
snow in the air had softened the numbing cold. 

Then slowly, almost unobservedly at first, large 
snowflakes began to fall, snowflakes of perfect 
forms, bigger than Spencer had ever seen before. 

“ Come, this is better! ” cried The Hunter, more 
cheerfully. “ This will give us a respite. Large 
snowflakes come from the lower strata of the air. 
There is no need to worry till the fine snow 
comes! ” 


116 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


In a very few minutes, all the world was white, for 
the snow lay as it fell. This light snowfall had its 
advantages, however, for it made the runners of the 
sledges go more smoothly, and the ponies, trotting 
stubbornly—though with drooping heads—found 
their loads easier to draw. The snow reflection, too, 
gave much more light. 

Then, far away and low, a faint moaning sound 
came from the far northeast. 

“ Whip them up! ” cried The Hunter. “ Ride 
forward, Spencer, and tell Tapchuv to whip the 
ponies up! Drive them hard! The blizzard will 
be on us in an hour or less, and there are twelve 
miles to go! ” 

Spencer started forward, but he never reached 
the first sledge where sat Tapchuv. Before he had 
reached half-way along the line of sledges, the 
horses burst into a tearing gallop. A wild chorus 
of yells arose from the Tungus drivers, for they had 
heard the moan of the coming Polar tempest; the 
whips, made of shredded elk-sinew, whistled vi¬ 
ciously as they fell on the ponies’ backs. 

Those sturdy beasts seemed to understand, and 
to find some latent strength for a final effort. 
Stumbling and leaping over the rough balls of 
frozen moss, they held to a clumsy gallop, the 


117 


AN ARCTIC BLIZZARD 

sledges rocking and lurching behind them. Only 
once did a sledge upset and the drivers righted it 
almost immediately. Unbelievable as it seemed, all 
the fastenings held. The rawhide thongs had frozen 
hard and did not “ give ” an inch. 

The large-flaked snow fell ever more and more 
heavily, blotting out the distance, but, from time 
to time, the travellers passed an upright stake, set 
there, the day before, to mark the road. How 
Tapchuv kept the direction was a miracle to Spen¬ 
cer, but that he did not swerve from the line was 
proved by the stakes. 

The darkness grew greyer. Dawn had come, but 
so diffused was the greyness that it was impossible 
to tell in which direction lay the east. Of sunrise, 
itself, there was none; nothing but a grisly pallid¬ 
ness. All the world was snow. One could scarcely 
see the third sledge ahead. But even the sense of 
daylight gave courage. The hours were passing. 
They were drawing nearer. 

Suddenly, there came an absolute lull. The flaky 
snow ceased falling. On the horizon, a dark line 
showed ahead. 

“ The forest! The forest! ” 

Madly, triumphantly, the drivers lashed their 
whips and the ponies galloped on. The nostrils of 


118 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


most of the animals were bleeding. All were trem¬ 
bling. Their panting breath came in wheezy gasps. 
It seemed incredible that they could still stay on 
their feet, impossible that they could still gallop. 

Then, with a scream of disappointed fury, the 
blizzard struck at the caravan, struck like an 
avalanche hurled by some Boreal demon. 

Had the blast come in their faces, not one breath 
could have been drawn. In sight of safety, all 
would have been annihilated. But the wind was 
behind them, and helped to drive them on. 

The snow came with a violence and thickness 
which made the air seem solid; the rushing of the 
wind made a vacuum before the face, which im¬ 
peded breathing. Spencer’s lungs ached as though 
every breath were a knife-thrust. 

The snowflakes of the blizzard were as fine as 
sifted powder and as hard as shot; they fell so 
thickly as to increase the depth of snow on the 
ground at the rate of an inch a minute. As this dry 
snow struck the ground, the raging hurricane be¬ 
hind whipped them up anew and drove them on in 
swirling confusion. 

The ponies, now half-way to their knees in soft 
snow, floundered. Their galloping became little 
more than a clumsy leaping forward, in jerks that 


AN ARCTIC BLIZZARD 119 

threatened to break the rawhide traces. The pace 
lessened. 

Then, from the leading sledge, a cry of triumph 
came down the line: 

“A tree! ” 

“ Spur on, Spencer! ” yelled The Hunter, above 
the blast. “ Get into shelter, Son! ” 

It was no longer a race of hours, scarcely of min¬ 
utes; it was almost of seconds. Already the ponies 
were beginning to be out of their depth in snow, 
the sledges to stick. 

The first sledge shot into the shelter of the forest, 
closely followed by the second. The third did not 
reach the belt of trees; both horses fell, together, 
nearly bringing disaster to the fourth sledge, which 
was just behind. 

Spencer, his heart beating madly, his lungs pain¬ 
ing acutely, black spots dancing before his eyes, got 
to safety. 

Where was the fifth sledge? 

Where was his father? 

Five yards away, nothing could be seen. It was 
impossible to face toward the north. 

Then, having broken the line of march, pell-mell 
and in confusion, ponies and sledges dashed into the 
shelter of the woods. 


120 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


Three sledges were still missing. 

But Spencer’s trouble was wilder, more agonized! 
Where was his father, who had remained at the rear 
to the last? 

Then it was that Tapchuv and the Tunguses 
showed their mettle. Though it was imminent 
death to face that Arctic blizzard, to leave the lee 
of the forest, a dozen sledge-drivers answered the 
leader’s shrill call, and four gallant ponies, though 
at the last gasp of exhaustion, obeyed. 

The sledges could not be more than twenty or 
thirty yards away, at most; they must be found be¬ 
fore they were snowed under. 

Spencer turned to follow Tapchuv, but one of the 
Tungus men seized the rawhide bridle and forced 
him back. 

$ 

“ No! You will die! ” he yelled above the storm. 

Not more than five or six minutes of waiting fol¬ 
lowed, but they seemed endless to the boy. 

After what must have been a terrible battle with 
the unchained elements, three moving masses of 
white emerged from the blinding fury of the bliz¬ 
zard—the three missing sledges, dragged and 
pushed by horse and man, in the desperation of a 
struggle that approached to madness. 

“ Father! ” cried Spencer. 


AN ARCTIC BLIZZARD 121 

From behind the rearmost sledge tottered a figure 
covered with caked snow. 

“ I’m all right, Son! ” came the cheering answer, 
and he fell prone, unconscious. 


CHAPTER VII 


A DANGEROUS RESCUE 

Forty Siberian natives in a forest, with tools, 
plenty of food, and under efficient direction, make 
little trouble of throwing together a wind-proof hut 
of logs chinked with snow. Before the short day¬ 
light of that day had faded away, two huts had been 
constructed in a little gully a quarter of a mile 
further in the forest; a small hut for Spencer and 
his father, a large one for the men. 

Near the edge of the forest, the blizzard could be 
heard raging; even in the sheltered gully the tem¬ 
pest shrilled through the upper branches of the 
trees. But, as every traveller in the Arctic knows, 
nothing is more amazing than the warmth in a 
forest shelter during a blizzard. The temperature 
is never very low when snow is actually falling, so 
long as there be no wind, and, in their gully in the 
pine forest, the members of the expedition were 
able to rest in comfort. 

Hunter Wolland, despite the strain of those ter¬ 
rible last ten minutes in the blizzard, had quite re¬ 
covered by evening. After a large and hearty hot 

meal—of which both were much in need—he and 

122 


A DANGEROUS RESCUE 123 

Spencer lay down beside a glowing fire to sleep. 
The healthy odor of the pine-woods was about 
them, instead of the disgusting smell of decaying 
mammoth. What a relief! 

They slept the clock round, and, when they 
woke, they found most of the natives sleeping still. 
The living ponies were worrying along, quite con¬ 
tentedly. True, nine of them were dead; they had 
died of broken hearts within a few minutes of their 
arrival. All the rest of the animals had recovered, 
and showed no special signs of the strain which 
they had undergone. 

Another big meal and another long sleep was the 
order of the next day. It was not until the third 
day that Spencer found energy enough to take in¬ 
terest in the things around him. In the weakened 
state that the month of work and “ sea-sickness ” 
had produced, the exhaustion of that fifty-hour 
sledge trip had been almost too much for him. As 
the boy admitted to himself, ten minutes’ delay 
would certainly have cost many lives; even three 
or four minutes’ lingering might have done so. Had 
they halted three hours, instead of two, not a man 
nor beast would have been left alive. 

“ When do we start off again, Father? ” he asked, 
at dinner-time, the third day. 


124 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


“ Not just yet, Son! Tapchuv went to the edge 
of the forest, soon after sunrise, this morning, and 
he reports that the blizzard is as bad as ever. You 
wouldn’t think so, here.” 

“No; sure I wouldn’t! ” 

“And you remember that the shaman said it 
would last five days—call it six. No matter if the 
weather did clear, I wouldn’t stir a foot before then! 
There’s not such a frantic hurry, now. In a way, 
we’re not likely to have any serious trouble from 
here on. This forest—so I understand from 
Tapchuv—is like a great ‘ wood-lot ’ for all the vil¬ 
lages south of here, and, until the Bolshevists came 
and wrecked everything in the form of organization, 
paid forest guardians were kept here to see that 
each village got its share. As a result, there’s a reg¬ 
ular hauling trail from here to the river, and thence 
along the ice. 

“ No, for the moment, Spencer, I’m fairly easy in 
my mind. Our sledges can’t get snowed in, here; 
there’s no fear of losing any of our precious find. 
The ponies can find plenty to eat. As for food, the 
forest must be plumb full of game animals which 
have fled here for shelter. Even if we had to stay 
here all winter, there’d be no damage done. 

“ I doubt if that will be necessary, though. Quite 


A DANGEROUS RESCUE 125 


likely the surface of the snow will be hard enough 
for travel, in a week or so; blizzard-snow packs very 
hard, and drifts are the only danger. They’re not 
very serious, either, to a party of our size, for a 
sledge and team can always be dug out. 

“ If the snow doesn’t pack, why, the men will 
have to go ahead and break trail. We’ve got a long 
journey and a trying one before we get to Yakutsk, 
and again to the rail-head at Irkutsk, but there’s no 
danger except from wolves and cold. Forty men, 
all with guns, can make short work of a pack of 
wolves. I only hope we shan’t be forced to send 
men ahead to break trail; it’s slow work.” 

“ Pity we haven’t got a live mammoth trained 
to walk ahead of the sledges. Wouldn’t he break a 
trail, though! ” 

“Find me your live mammoth, Son! But, even 
then, I’m not sure that you’d be able to train him. 
If the mammoth had been suitable for domestica¬ 
tion, Prehistoric Man would have domesticated 
him. Then the race of mammoths wouldn’t have 
become extinct, but would have been preserved, like 
the Indian elephant of to-day.” 

“ What did make the mammoths extinct, Father? 
I’ve asked you several times, but you’ve never told 
me.” 


126 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

“ For a very good reason/’ replied The Hunter. 
“ I don’t know. Nobody knows.” 

“ Don’t the scientists know? ” 

“ Not a bit of it! ” 

“ Why not?” 

“ It’s quite a complicated question, Son. Each 
of the three scientific theories which is supposed to 
explain the extinction of the mammoth fails to ex¬ 
plain it.” 

“ I’d always supposed that mammoths disap¬ 
peared off the map because they were all frozen up, 
suddenly.” 

“ Just by a sudden cold snap, eh? Well, absurd 
as that sounds, you’re not the only one to think so. 
A good many paleontologists are of your opinion. 
Myself, I don’t see it. The Polar Bear, the Fox, the 
Elk, the Wolverine, and the Reindeer lived in this 
country during the days of the mammoth, and they 
get along in Northeastern Siberia quite comfort¬ 
ably, still. 

“ Why should the Hairy Mammoth of the North 
have made a fuss over a cold wave? He’d long 
hair, thick wool under that, a tough hide and a 
layer of several inches of fat; he and his chum, 
the Woolly Rhinoceros, were better off for cloth¬ 
ing than any of the other animals, except, perhaps, 


A DANGEROUS RESCUE 127 


the Polar Bear, who can live happily in a refrigera¬ 
tor. The mammoth ought to have been the most 
comfortable of them all, and if the others sur- 

as*' • 

vived it, why couldn’t he? 

“ There’s another thing, too. If the cause of ex¬ 
tinction really were some sudden climatic change, as 
one school of scientists declares, why didn’t the Cave 
Bears, and the Giant Elk, and the Sabre-Tooth 
Tigers and the rest of the mammoth’s big contem¬ 
poraries get frozen in, by the same methods? Not 
a single one has been found cold-storaged, not one! 

“ Consider this, too, Spencer. Some hundreds of 
thousands of mammoth tusks—millions, probably 
—have been found in the ‘ mammoth region/ but 
Science has only found the remains of twenty-one 
cold-storaged mammoths and four cold-storaged 
Woolly Rhinoceroses. I’ll just mention, in pass¬ 
ing, that none have been found on the tundra; all 
have been exposed by the erosion of gullies or ice- 
cliffs, just like ours, and are probably due to the 
mischance of a mammoth, weighing several tons, 
falling into a crevasse and being unable to get out. 
When the crevasse filled up, he was frozen in.” 

“ I hadn’t thought of all that,” rejoined the boy, 
thoughtfully. “ The mammoth ought to have been 
able to stand the cold.” 


128 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

“ Of course he should; there’s no doubt of it! 
Then there’s the second theory that a more gradual 
change of climate caused a lack of food, and that 
all the mammoths starved to death. In company 
with Bassett Digby, I consider that theory just as 
absurd as the other, even though some eminent 
naturalists support it. Why suppose that a mam¬ 
moth was such an idiot? You saw the size of his 
brain, the other day, when we dissected it. Sup¬ 
pose the climate did grow colder and food grow 
scarcer, couldn’t he trek southward in the direction 
of milder weather and more provision? Migrations, 
for food, are events of every-day occurrence to graz¬ 
ing or browsing animals, elephants, especially. 

“ When an African feeding-ground gives out, 
through fire and drought, and a large tract of 
browsing country is destroyed, do the herds of ele¬ 
phants sit down with the docile resignation of a 
group of Hindu villagers in a famine, and die? 
Take my word for it, they do not! They lumber 
off at a good steady trot until they come to a dis¬ 
trict where there is food, and plenty of it. 

“ From my point of view, Spencer, the starvation 
idea is not feasible. If there had been such a dimi¬ 
nution of food in the north, the mammoths would 
have wandered southward, and the species would 


A DANGEROUS RESCUE 129 

simply have transferred itself to another part of 
Asia. Now, it didn’t.” 

“ How do we know? ” 

“ Because mammoth remains occur in a very defi¬ 
nite belt, and there is no evidence of such a trek 
to the southward. Besides all which, there is not 
the faintest evidence of any radical change in cli¬ 
mate and alteration of the flora of Siberia. And 
every cold-storaged mammoth, which has so far 
been found, had his stomach well-filled and was fat.” 

“ What do you think put an end to them, 
Father? ” 

“ There’s something to be said for the idea that 
Prehistoric Man killed them off. The extinction of 
animals by Man is something that we see every 
day. In our own lifetime, Man has made the buf¬ 
falo almost extinct, save for a few semi-domesticated 
herds. The whalers have almost brought several 
species of whale to extinction. There’s just one 
herd of European wild cattle left, in a nobleman’s 
park in England. In the time of Julius Caesar, the 
aurochs was as plentiful in Europe as the buffalo 
was in America in the days of George Washington, 
but there’s not a single one left, now. It takes the 
paternal care of four governments to keep the fur 
seal from becoming extinct, and the sea otter has 


130 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


disappeared forever during the last twenty years. 
Bounties on the heads of beasts of prey soon bring 
about extinction: Canada is exterminating the 
coyote; India, the tiger; and Tasmania, the Tas¬ 
manian Devil. The Norwegian bear is making his 
last stand. So is the wild boar of the Riviera hills 
and the camel of Southwest Spain. 

“ As Digby puts it: ‘ Man merely asks the bird 
or the beast: Are you more good to me, dead or 
alive? If the former is the case—thumbs down! 
Live reindeer were more good to the Paleolithic 
Men in France; they were tractable and they have 
survived. Dead mammoths were more good to him 
than live mammoths; they were intractable and 
dangerous, so they were exterminated. The process 
took time, but it was achieved eventually.’ ” 

“I can’t believe that, Father!” objected Spen¬ 
cer. “ You’ve told me, yourself, that the world was 
very little peopled in the Stone Age. There must 
have been almost whole continents where there 
weren’t any Prehistoric Men at all, or, anyhow, 
where there weren’t enough of them to kill off all 
the mammoths! ” 

“ There were, Son, and I’m pleased that you’re 
sharp enough to think of it. I can’t agree with 
Digby entirely. His argument that Primitive Man 



A DANGEROUS RESCUE 131 

hunted the mammoth for food—not with bow-and- 
arrow, of course, but by means of pitfalls—may be 
true enough, it probably is; but that doesn’t explain 
the vast number of mammoth bones and tusks in 
regions where there is not a shred of evidence to 
show that human beings ever lived there. I’m will¬ 
ing to support his idea that the paintings and en¬ 
gravings of' mammoths, done by Men of the Old 
Stone Age, prove that mammoths were hunted and 
that these designs were charms for the hunters. 

“ But when it comes to extinction, this theory 
simply won’t hold water. To me it seems much 
more probable that the race of mammoths expired 
simply because its time had come. A species has 
its old age and its death, just like an individual. 
We might as well try to bring in the agency of 
Man to explain the extinction of the Dinotheres, 
which—since they lived millions of years before 
Man—is manifestly impossible. 

“ Species do not always merge into other species; 
many of them simply become extinct. Their knell 
is rung. Upon a race which was steadily diminish¬ 
ing, Man’s efforts at destruction would hasten the 
end, there is little doubt of that, but Man, alone, 
cannot have exterminated the mammoths. They 
came to a natural extinction. You needn’t hope to 


132 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

find a living mammoth, Spencer, not even as a trail- 
breaker; there are no more! ” 

The blizzard lasted exactly the five days that the 
shaman had prophesied, but the expedition did not 
leave the forest until a week later. Tapchuv went 
in advance to the nearest village southward to find 
nine ponies to replace those which had died from 
the blizzard trip. He brought back another guide 
with him, one who knew the surrounding country 
thoroughly and could determine where the deepest 
drifts would lie. 

The journey, as The Hunter had said, proved 
long, uncomfortable, and trying. The cold was such 
as Spencer had never felt, and when, two weeks 
later, he reached the town of Yakutsk—the only 
town of Northern Siberia—the sight of houses and 
streets seemed too good to be true. There were 
even electric lights! These were very useful, for, 
at the time of year that Spencer reached there, the 
sun showed itself above the horizon for less than an 
hour each day. 

The town numbered slightly under 10,000 in¬ 
habitants, mostly Yakuts, Lamuts, Yukaghirs, and 
Tunguses. Thirty Russian families lived in the 
town—excluding convict refugees—and it was 
thirty-two years since an American had visited the 



A DANGEROUS RESCUE 133 

place. Indeed, it is recorded that only four Ameri¬ 
cans have ever seen Yakutsk. 

In many senses of the word, Yakutsk is the 
northernmost and uttermost point of civilization 
in Siberia, since it is the only link between the 
populated south and the desolation of the region 
above the Arctic Circle. The link is by the Lena 
River, a stream nearly three thousand miles long, 
which is navigable in summer between Yakutsk and 
Kirensk, a distance of some eight hundred miles. 
There is weekly steamboat communication between 
the two points. In winter, travel is by sledge on 
the ice of the river. 

Leaving Yakutsk, Spencer and his father took a 
troika sleigh with high sides, deeply upholstered in 
furs, comfortable, smooth-riding and warm. For 
scores of miles together, the river ran between fairly 
high banks, especially on the southeastern side, 
and these banks protected the travellers from the 
biting winds of the almost perpetual night. 

The two Americans found regular stopping-places 
on the river bank for every night’s rest, but Ivan 
and Tapchuv always slept on the sledges, taking 
guard alternately. The caravan was coming down 
toward civilization, and honesty was no longer to 
be expected. 


134 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

All the Tungus sledge-drivers, save Tapchuv, had 
been sent back from Yakutsk, Hunter Wolland 
having sold two loads of his mammoth ivory to pay 
them well and to reward them richly, besides. He 
did not sell it all, knowing that he could secure five 
times the price for it when delivered in the United 
States, especially as he trusted to be able to bring 
the fossil ivory in, free of duty, since it had been 
collected by a scientific expedition, and the pro¬ 
ceeds of the sale were to be devoted to strictly 
scientific purposes. 

A few minutes after leaving Vitim, a small and 
poverty-stricken village below the mountains of the 
Patom Plateau, Tapchuv stepped off the leading 
sledge, waited for the caravan to pass him, and, on 
the approach of the driving sleigh, signalled to his 
masters to stop. Though there was only a young 
moon, the reflection on the ice made it easy to see 
the native’s signs. 

Wondering what had happened, The Hunter 
drew rein, and the sleigh, with its tinkling bells, 
came to a stop. 

“ Young Master,” said Tapchuv, addressing him¬ 
self to Spencer, as he always did, since the father 
could not speak a word of Tungus, “ you are really 
Americans; yes? ” 


A DANGEROUS RESCUE 135 


“ Of course! Why?” 

“ I am Tungus, but I am Russian,” said the chief 
driver, “ Tsarist Russian. I, of my tribe, am First 
Man. What is a country without a chief? ” 

The boy was a little taken aback at this unex¬ 
pected introduction. It seemed strange that Tap- 
chuv should stop the sleigh at the beginning of a 
day’s travel to start one of his regular denuncia¬ 
tions of the Russian Revolution and the Soviet 
Government, which the Tunguses and the Yakuts 
always call “ Chiefless Russia.” But he knew, 
from experience, that Tapchuv was less garrulous 
than most of his race, and that, when he did talk, 
it was because he had a plan to offer or a warning 
to give. 

“ Well, Tapchuv? ” he queried. 

“ Tell me, Young Master. Are Americans always 
kind to Americans? ” 

“Yes! A thousand times, yes! Always!” 

The Tungus chief looked around to make sure 
that he was not observed, though the frozen river, 
half a mile wide, would not have given hiding-place 
to a rat. 

“ It is thus that it is, Young Master. I will tell. 
It is important. In the sleep-time, while I was on 
watch and Ivan was asleep, I heard some one prowl- 


136 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


ing about the sledges. I went back softly, very 
softly, carrying my gun. It was ready. My knife, 
too, was ready. 

“ There I saw, creeping under the skin covering 
of one of the sledges, a small man, a very small 
man. He was so small that I took him for a Lamut. 
They are great thieves. 

“ This small man was a thief, I was sure of that, 
but I could not see what he could want to steal. 
The ‘ giant rat ’ bones are not good to steal, they 
are not good to sell. One little Lamut cannot carry 
away a tusk! So I waited to see what he would 
do. It might not be a Lamut, it might be one of 
the Chiefless Ones (Bolshevists). It is bad to shoot 
them. Others find out, after. 

“ I waited a long time, Young Master. Nothing 
happened. The little man had crept under the skin 
of the sledge and had stayed there. Softly, softly, 
like the white fox, I went very near. Then, hold¬ 
ing my knife ready, I lifted the skin. The little 
man, as I had thought him, was fast asleep. With 
my knife at his throat I wakened him. He was not 
a Lamut. He was a white man boy, Young Master, 
not as old as you! ” 

“ What? ” 

“ A white man boy,” Tapchuv repeated. “ When 


A DANGEROUS RESCUE 137 

I wakened him, he looked at me and said ‘ Ameri¬ 
can! ’ ” 

“ What? ” 

This in an even louder tone than before. 

“ It is so, Young Master, as I tell it. Then I 
went and wakened Ivan, because he speaks Rus¬ 
sian. We went back together. The Very Young 
Master was still there, but afraid, very much afraid, 
of my knife, as I think. We talked very long time. 
Ivan did not understand much. The Very Young 
Master is American. He has been imprisoned by 
the Chiefless Ones. I do not find out why. He 
escaped. He was followed. He got up here, hidden 
on a boat. He ran away to the woods. Winter 
come and he has no food.” 

“ Where is he? ” cried Spencer, wildly excited. 
“ On the sledge, still? ” 

“ No, Young Master. I was afraid. The Chief¬ 
less Ones might come and look. I sent him away, 
up the river, where we must pass. I told him to 
put stones like a grave, four stones at comers and 
one big one at top, three men’s lengths out from 
the left bank.” 

“ Well? ” 

“ There are the stones, Young Master! What do 
you order to do? ” 


138 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


“ Get him, of course! ” and, stuttering in his ex¬ 
citement, Spencer repeated Tapchuv’s story to his 
father. 

“ What an extraordinary thing! ” The Hunter ex¬ 
claimed. “ If there’s an American boy in danger, 
we’ve got to rescue him, there’s no doubt of that! 
But/’ and he looked grave, “ how about his pass¬ 
port? You know the trouble we’ve had, even with 
all our papers in strict order! The Bolsheviks will 
spot him in a minute.” 

“ I have thought in my head,” said Tapchuv, 
when Spencer translated this to him. “ The Chief¬ 
less Ones are very hard and very much fond of 
blood, but they are not very clever. As far as 
Irkutsk, it is not difficult. I will kill a driver—he 
is only a Yukaghir—next sleep-time, and we will 
dress Very Young Master in his clothes.” 

“ But that’s murder! ” protested Spencer. 

“ He is only a Yukaghir, that people is valuable 
nothing. It is also murder to let Very Young Mas¬ 
ter be taken and shot by the Chiefless Ones.” 

“ That’s true enough,” admitted Spencer. “ But 
couldn’t you bribe one of them to change clothes 
and give us his papers? ” 

“ There is less danger my plan. The dead ones 
do not talk very much.” 


A DANGEROUS RESCUE 139 

-“No,” said The Hunter, who had guessed the 
Tungus’ meaning, “ I will not have murder. But we 
can discuss that, later. We can’t delay, this way, 
now. Think, Spencer, that poor chap is hidden in 
the bushes over there, watching us, and probably 
eating his heart out wondering why we don’t make 
a move. Come along! ” 

He leaped out of the sleigh, closely followed by 
Spencer, leaving Tapchuv to hold the horses. 

As they touched foot to ice, a figure, in tattered 
shreds of furs and clothing, stumbled out of the 
bushes toward them. His feet were bound in 
rags, and the rags were black with clotted blood. 
He tried to speak, but no words would come, only a 
burst of hysterical tears. 

Spencer and his father helped him into the sleigh 
silently and gave him food and drink. They fed 
him only in moderation, for the boy was starving, 
his face like parchment and his stomach abnormally 
swollen by famine. Then, in broken gasps, he gave 
his name as Basil Taylor and told his story. 

It was simple, as most tragic stories are. 

Basil’s father had been the American agent for a 
big Chicago agricultural implement company, with 
offices in Moscow and in one or two important 
Siberian towns, such as Omsk and Tomsk. When 


140 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


the World War broke out, he settled in Tomsk. 
Basil’s mother had died during the first year of the 
war, and there was no way for little Basil to be 
sent to the States. Only military trains were run¬ 
ning. Father and son had been unmolested during 
the first part of the war and during the Lvoff and 
Kerensky administrations. 

A few weeks after the Soviet regime came into 
power, all the agricultural machines were seized, 
and all their property confiscated; and the father 
and his little son were turned out of their home 
and only, as a “ courtesy,” allowed to live in the 
fireless warehouse. Most imprudently, the father 
sent a letter to his firm in America, via Vladivos¬ 
tok, explaining that all the farm machinery had 
been seized, and telling the whole story. 

The letter was intercepted. 

One day, half a dozen Red soldiers came to the 
empty warehouse, where the American was sitting 
at his idle desk. Without a word of explanation, 
they fired. The father fell. As he lay dying, the 
Reds threw at his feet the letter he had written. 1 

Basil became an urchin of the streets, in Tomsk, 
living as best he could from the refuse of the 
gutters. (This was before the organization of the 

1 This is an actual occurrence.—F. R-W. 


A DANGEROUS RESCUE 141 

Child Brigand Bands in which as this book goes to 
press [1927] there are over 300,000 runaway and 
homeless children living as bandits in Soviet Rus¬ 
sia.) Then Basil tried to get away by jumping a 
train on the Trans-Siberian, but he was captured. 
A Red Guard found on him the fatal letter—which 
he had taken as his only remembrance of his father 
and as a possible identification, if he ever reached 
America—and the nine-year-old boy was sent to 
the notorious penal settlement of Krasnoyarsk as a 
“ political prisoner.” Thence he had escaped, as 
Tapchuv had said. 

Only the barest outline of the story could be told, 
for Basil was very weak, but the two Americans of 
the expedition heard enough to show that, at all 
hazards—and the hazards were very great—the boy 
must be rescued. It was exceedingly dangerous, 
for, in Soviet Russia, to help a “ political prisoner ” 
to escape means execution without trial. 

“1 have thought of a better plan,” said Spencer, 
who had been thinking hard all the time that the 
boy was speaking. “ Basil shall have my passport, 
and pass as me. As your son, Father, no one will 
question him closely.” 

“ And what about you, Spencer ? ” 

“ I speak the Tungus language. I can imper- 


142 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

sonate a native a hundred times better than Basil 
can. Ill do the changing of clothes and go as a 
sledge-driver. There’s no need to murder anybody; 
a powerful narcotic will do the trick just as well and 
hell only suppose his clothes have been stolen. 
Well leave his purse, with money in it, lying on 
the floor, as if it had dropped and not been noticed. 
Well have gone on by the time he wakes. None of 
these new men we’ve just picked up at Vitim know 
me.” 

“ But you’ll have to live with them, sleep with 
them, run the risk of catching leprosy and who 
knows what other horrible disease! ” cried his 
father. 

“ Somebody’s got to run the risk,” answered 
Spencer, gravely. “ I can’t pretend I like it, but 
we can’t fail Basil, can we? ” 

Father and son clasped hands. 

“ It is good,” agreed Tapchuv. “ I shall take 
Young Master as my son. He will be Tungus boy. 
So, no one will suspect.” 


CHAPTER VIII 


CAPTURING ELEPHANTS 

The story of the adventures of the journey home¬ 
ward with the flesh-and-blood mammoth, of Spen¬ 
cer’s arrest by the Bolsheviki at Irkutsk and his 
sensational evasion in a market-cart, of Basil’s 
serious illness half-way to Vladivostok, of Spencer’s 
narrow escape from a second arrest by Chinese Red 
troops who had been advised by telegraph to watch 
for him, of his voyage down the coast to Canton 
in a smuggler’s sailing junk, of his hiding in the 
“ foreign compound,” of his trip thence to Hong- 
Kong by a British steamer whose captain defied 
China and all things Chinese, and so home to San 
Francisco and Detroit, would form a long book in 
itself. The boy seemed fated to adventure, and 
equally fated to find some way out at moments of 
extreme peril. He did not reach home until eight 
months after his father. 

In order to carry on, as long as possible, the 

fiction that Spencer was Tapchuv’s son, the Tungus 

chief had accompanied the party all the way to 

Vladivostok. There, The Hunter had provided the 

faithful guide with an ample sum of money, so 

143 


144 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

that, when navigation should be resumed in the 
spring, he could return by way of Okhotsk and so 
reach Yakutsk overland. 

This meant a long and arduous journey, but, for 
that, Tapchuv cared little; he was returning to his 
home, the richest man in the tribe. True, he was 
very eager to accompany the Americans to the 
United States, as their body-servant, but The 
Hunter knew well that such a plan would only en¬ 
tail the Arctic native’s speedy death, for neither the 
food nor the climate would agree with him. Polar 
peoples cannot be transplanted. 

The Hunter had not been seriously disturbed 
concerning the safety of Spencer since the time 
of the boy’s arrival at Canton, for a cablegram from 
there had reassured him. The rest of Spencer’s 
journey, especially the crossing of the Pacific 
Ocean, had been delightful, the more so as he met 
an English teak merchant on the boat, a man who 
employed sixty elephants in his up-country lumber 
settlement, and who greatly stirred the boy with 
his stories of tame elephants. Spencer was, indeed, 
the hero of the boat, for every one had heard of the 
mammoth find, and the United States Government 
had already sent a stern note about him to the 
Soviet authorities. 


CAPTURING ELEPHANTS 145 

“ If you want to go elephant-hunting, Spencer;” 
the Anglo-Indian teak merchant said, when the boy 
had confided his ambitions, “ it’s not much use for 
you to go to India or Ceylon, as you suggest. The 
time has passed for that, you know. There are 
plenty of wild elephants there, still, hundreds, 
thousands, probably, but the laws restricting the 
hunting of elephants are very severe. You see, In¬ 
dian elephants are too valuable to be killed for their 
ivory, especially as the tusks are small. It is in¬ 
finitely better to train them. Whether for sport or 
for ivory, the place to go is Africa.” 

“ I thought India was overrun with wild ele¬ 
phants, Mr. Beaverway! ” 

“ India is a very populous country, and wild ele¬ 
phants are as little likely to be found in the cul¬ 
tivated valleys of the Punjaub as in the streets of 
Calcutta/’ his informant answered, with a smile. 
“ Even in the up-country districts, the right of 
hunting elephants is very strictly preserved. Most 
of that sort of thing, now, in India, is kept as a 
sport for royalty. It is exceedingly expensive, too, 
as the hunt is always carried out on a grand 
scale. 

“It was not always so,” he continued, leaning 
back in his steamer-chair, and puffing contentedly 


146 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


at his pipe. “ Fifty years ago, in the southern part 
of the Peninsula, especially along the western ghats 
in the Wynad, Malabar, Coinmat ore, Madura and 
Tinnevelly districts, wild elephants were so nu¬ 
merous that people would have paid you to go and 
hunt them! 

“ As a matter of fact, my boy, the Government 
did offer bounties for the destruction of elephants. 
Herds of them would come down and ruin a har¬ 
vest in a single night. Why, there were whole dis¬ 
tricts driven into famine by the elephants! Shoot¬ 
ing them was not only a sport, it was a duty, and 
one of the very things which reconciled some of 
the peoples of India to British rule was the Eng¬ 
lishman^ love of big-game shooting. He paid his 
bearers high prices to help him to do what they 
would have been willing to pay to have done, so 
desirous were they of having dangerous wild beasts 
killed. 

“ Naturally, the sport was conducted on very 
different principles then. It was not considered 
unsportsmanlike, as it would be now, to kill a cow 
elephant, though, naturally, the male was always 
preferred for the trophy his tusks afforded. Native 
shikarris, or hunters, hunted steadily during those 
years, either with or without Europeans. Guns, 


CAPTURING ELEPHANTS 147 


too, became more deadly. The natural result was 
that the elephants were driven back to the remoter 
parts of the jungles, where they could not destroy 
whole plantations in an evening’s stroll. 

“ As soon as they ceased to become troublesome, 
restrictions were put on shooting them, and estab¬ 
lishments were organized in the jungle for their 
capture. Instead of being Man’s masters, they be¬ 
came Man’s slaves. Personally, I think there’s just 
as much sport—and a great deal more danger—in 
capturing wild elephants than there is in shooting 
them, especially if the ‘ khoonkie ? method is used, 
as it used to be in my younger days, and as it is, 
still, in up-country districts. 

“ Over the greater part of India, now, elephant¬ 
shooting requires a special permit—which is not 
easily accorded—and it is generally confined to one 
tusker, or to a ‘ rogue , which has been attacking 
men. These permits are highly prized, and most 
of them are granted to British officers of high rank, 
stationed in India. In Northern Burmah, naturally, 
beyond the zone of cultivation, the restrictions are 
less rigorous. In the native states of Travancore 
and Mysore, the Maharajahs grant occasional per¬ 
mission to hunters who come recommended from 
the British Resident or Advisory Governor.” 


148 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


“ For real elephant-hunting, to get tusks, I mean, 
you advise Africa, sir? ” 

“ Advise? I should put it a good deal more 
strongly than that, my boy. I say that Africa is 
the only place for good elephant-hunting, now, and 
perhaps you may find Northeastern Rhodesia and 
Portuguese East Africa as good a part as any. At 
least, I know a good many hunters who have been 
there, and they tell me there’s ivory enough in those 
parts to keep tusk-hunters going for a good many 
years, yet. 

“ But if you want to see sport in India, you’ll 
find all you want in the capturing of elephants, if 
you ever get that far into the interior. From your 
stories of Siberia, it seems that you can stand 
roughing it. If you are anxious to see some real 
doings with wild elephants in India, I can give you 
and your father letters to friends of mine, up- 
country, where the ‘ khoonkie ’ method is still used. 
You’ll find that a live bull elephant can give you 
just as much thrill as a dead mammoth, or I’m 
much mistaken! ” 

“ What is a ‘ khoonkie,’ sir? ” 

“ Eh, what? You don’t know? No, I don’t sup¬ 
pose you would. Well, a ‘ khoonkie ’ is a high-caste 
cow elephant, which, from a very early age, has been 



An elephant kraal in India. 

Note the “khoonkies” with their girths on, ready for the work of taming their wild mates. 



Indian elephants leaving the water. 



CAPTURING ELEPHANTS 149 

trained to the work of capturing wild elephants. 
They’re trained like race-horses, specially fed and 
constantly exercised to give them endurance and 
wind. There’s quite a process of selection, for only 
the very fastest are kept for ‘ khoonkies.’ ” 

“ Can elephants run fast, sir? ” 

“ H’m. You remember Kipling’s phrase: ‘ An 
elephant can’t run, but he can catch an express 
train.’ That’s about right, though it’s not very 
often that an elephant takes the trouble to move 
quickly. He hasn’t any need for it, you know; he 
doesn’t chase anything for his prey and no animal 
is going to chase him. 

“ To return to our ‘ khoonkies/ I suppose the 
best way to explain is to tell you of a hunt I joined, 
myself, up near Impoora. It was more by good 
luck than good management that I’m alive to tell 
the tale.” 

“ Please tell it, sir! ” 

The teak merchant smiled at the boy’s excited 
interest. 

“Well, story for story is fair, I suppose, and 
you’ve spun me as good a yam about that mam¬ 
moth-ghost of yours as I’ve heard for a long while. 
It happened this way: 

“ I’d had rather a nasty attack of low fever, and 


150 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


so I went up-country to the house of a friend of 
mine named McCleary. He was one of those 
harum-scarum Irishmen that you meet all over the 
world, successful this year and a failure next. He 
could never settle down anywhere. He had a good 
tea plantation in Ceylon, once, and threw it up, one 
day, because he found it dull. He wasn’t even go¬ 
ing to take the trouble to try to sell it, because 
the first purchaser had dilly-dallied and annoyed 
him. So I undertook the sale, without letting him 
know, and put the money in the bank to his credit. 
It’s kept him from starving, once or twice, since 
then. 

“ Well, you know, McCleary tried all sorts of oc¬ 
cupations—I’ll tell you the yarn of his life, some 
time—but at last he got into this business of cap¬ 
turing wild elephants. That was lively enough, 
even for him, and now he has become one of the 
largest dealers in semi-domesticated elephants, with 
a magnificent house high up on the mountains. He 
heard that I was ill, and came and fetched me, 
swearing that I’d saved him, and he was going to 
save me. He didn’t ask my permission, by the way, 
and I was too weak to throw him out. So I went. 

“ In a few weeks I was all right again, and wanted 
to get back to my business, but McCleary wouldn’t 


CAPTURING ELEPHANTS 151 

Hear of my going till I had seen an elephant ‘ round¬ 
up/ as he insisted on calling it. I think he had 
been a cowboy in your country, once. I’m fairly 
well acquainted with elephants and their ways, so 
I agreed. Indeed, I was curious to see how the af¬ 
fair was managed. 

“ We started off with ten ‘khoonkies’ and two 
very husky tuskers, used to the work, and very 
ready to prod a cantankerous captive into submis¬ 
sion. You can realize for yourself, Spencer, that 
nothing less than an elephant will serve to handle 
another elephant. You can’t slap a rambunctious 
bull elephant on the wrist and tell him to be good! ” 

The boy smiled at the idea, and the narrator pro¬ 
ceeded : 

“ Nothing would satisfy McCleary but that he 
and I should each ride one of the ‘ khoonkies ’ on 
this hunt, and though I’ll admit that I hung back 
a little, he finally stung my pride into agreeing. It 
was an insane thing to do, of course, but that was 
McCleary all over. 

“ Off we started for the grassy plateau where, the 
day before, McCleary’s scouts had signalled a herd 
of wild elephants. As I said, we had ten ‘ khoon¬ 
kies/ two tuskers to act as punishers, and half a 
dozen cow elephants with affectionate dispositions. 


152 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


“ You needn’t laugh, I mean exactly what I say: 
‘ with affectionate dispositions.’ You’ll see why, in 
a minute. 

“ The equipment of a 4 khoonkie’ when arrayed 
for a hunt is as follows: A stout rope is passed twice 
around the body to act as a girth, then under the 
neck and tail like a breast-band and crupper, and 
secured fast, close to the withers, for the sling to 
be attached. The rope is stout enough to hold a 
ship. 

“ On the ‘ khoonkie ’ two people ride bareback. 
Near the neck is the mahout, or driver, always a 
man specially chosen and trained, and, on the 
withers, sits the assistant. They are not lashed on, 
although I thought, myself, that I should like to 
be, but there are short ropes for handholds attached 
to the girth. The mahout directs everything, and 
it is the assistant’s business to keep the animal go¬ 
ing at full speed, when necessary, by light blows 
on a place near the root of the tail where the ele¬ 
phant is especially sensitive. 

“ This particular time, we did not have very far 
to go. When the herd of elephants was sighted, I 
got down from the saddle of my horse, with a sigh, 
for I was a great deal more comfortable there than 
I was going to be for the next hour or two. I was 



The Mahout directs everything. 






Elephant stacking timber. 

In the Bombay-Burma Timber-Yard. 








CAPTURING ELEPHANTS 153 


hoisted by the elephant into the mahout’s place, 
and took my lasso with decided qualm.” 

“ A lasso! ” exclaimed Spencer. “ Do you lasso 
wild elephants? ” 

“ You do—when you can! I did, that day, and 
felt inordinately proud of myself. 

“ Mounted on my ‘ khoonkie 9 and invoking my 
lucky star that all would go well, we started off 
after that band of elephants. McCleary had told 
me that he wanted none but half-grown or three- 
quarter grown calves, unless a specially fine young 
high-caste male should come handy, and our first 
duty was to separate likely animals from the 
herd.” 

“ To cut them out, just as one cuts out a branded 
steer, on the cattle ranches? ” 

“ Exactly. Since ‘ khoonkies 9 work in pairs, 
McCleary and I kept together. He had the mahout 
of one of the tuskers keep close behind us, as well 
as two of the affectionate cows, for he had spotted 
a fine young male, with tusks just showing, which 
would make a rich prize. So off we went. 

“You asked me, just now, if elephants can run. 
* Khoonkies ’ can, there’s no doubt of that. When 
my man, behind, began to tickle up the beast, she 
went off like a locomotive running wild. How I 


154 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


stuck on—standing up, of course—I don’t know; I 
suppose it was because I was too much afraid to 
fall off. 

“ That plateau was covered with grass a yard 
high, and interspersed with shrubs and small trees. 
It was rough and crossed with little gullies, so that 
the ground couldn’t be seen. I hadn’t the faintest 
idea where we were going. All I could do was to 
hang on, wondering if my teeth weren’t going to be 
jolted out of their sockets, as the elephant tore 
madly on at her topmost speed. 

“ The young bull elephant, ahead, was going a 
good thirty miles an hour, and we were tearing after 
him in full career, our two ‘ khoonkies ’ neck and 
neck, the tusker and the cow elephants plunging on 
behind. We pounded on, with violent disregard of 
anything like safety, through shrubs and under¬ 
wood, over ditches, down slopes and up rises covered 
with thorn thickets, holding a straight line over and 
through everything. Every minute I expected to 
see my beast go heels over head, and my man, be¬ 
hind, was whacking the animal for all he was worth. 
I couldn’t give you an idea of that frantic chase, 
barebacked, cross-country on a racing elephant! 
You see an elephant, at full speed, pays no atten¬ 
tion to where he puts his feet; he depends on 



CAPTURING ELEPHANTS 155 

violent lurchings of the body to regain his balance, 
and though he rocks like a mongoose, stumbles like 
a bear, and strides like a scared ostrich, he doesn’t 
often fall. But the motion! A cork going down 
the Niagara rapids has an easy time of it compared 
with a mahout on a ‘ khoonkie M ” 

“ It must be great! ” cried Spencer, his eyes shin¬ 
ing. 

“ Afterwards, maybe,” the man responded, dryly. 
“ At the time, you hang on, and thank Providence 
that you are still hanging on. You can’t slack speed 
for a minute, for the wild elephant can go as fast 
as you can, for half-an-hour or so. Then, being 
grass-fed and untrained to speed, he begins to 
weaken, and the ‘ khoonkie’ gains. You mustn’t 
let your proposed captive get his second wind, or 
it’s all off; you wouldn’t overtake him before night¬ 
fall. 

“ As the ‘ khoonkie ’ ranges close, nine times out 
of ten, the prize stops dead, but, as soon as you 
come near, he starts off again. That’s the minute 
to lasso him! Grabbing tightly the hand-rope with 
your left hand, you drop the lasso over the wild ele¬ 
phant’s head. It won’t go over the trunk, of course, 
but as soon as the jungle animal feels the rope over 
his face, he curls up his trunk with an elephant’s 


156 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


natural sense of saving from harm his most delicate 
organ. As the trunk curls up, the rope falls under 
it, and you tighten up on the lasso, which, of course, 
is stoutly attached to the double girth on your 
‘ khoonkie.’ Then your mount stops, and puts her 
whole weight backwards and sidewise to resist the 
pull when the rope comes taut. 

“ You can imagine the jerk! 

“ Naturally, since the rope is around the wild ele¬ 
phant’s neck, not around his feet, it doesn’t throw 
him over, as you lasso a steer on the plains; it 
strangles him a bit, but he’s plenty strong enough 
to charge ahead, dragging the resisting ‘ khoonkie ’ 
with him. But the ‘ khoonkie ’ has the weight on 
the girth, while the captive has it around the neck, 
so it’s not long before the wild elephant begins to 
get half suffocated. 

“ The time I’m telling you of, my ‘ khoonkie ’ 
was a little faster than McCleary’s, so I got to the 
young bull first. I missed my initial throw, but 
got him the second time. I was prepared for every¬ 
thing, except that first jerk. It lifted me off my 
feet as if I had been a stone shot from a catapult. 
Fortunately, I had the handhold in my left hand 
with a death-grip, and though I was sent flying, I 
didn’t let go. My shoulder hit the ‘ khoonkie’s ’ 


CAPTURING ELEPHANTS 157 

head with a thump, and I scrambled back to place, 
though with my wrist badly strained. 

“ In a minute or two, McCleary’s ‘ khoonkie ’ 
ranged up on the other side, and he dropped a 
noose. Our wild elephant was captured! There 
was a good deal to be done, yet, however, to bring 
him to submission. As I had been carefully in¬ 
structed what to do, I slipped off my mount, with 
the tether-ropes in my hand, and started to tie the 
wild elephant. Whether because of my strained 
wrist, whether McCleary was waiting for me or 
what, I don’t know, but I suddenly realized that 
the beast was free, at least, free enough to turn 
and strike at me. Of course, I should have slipped 
between my ‘ khoonkie’s’ legs and got clear that 
way. I didn’t think of it, and started to run. 

“ Owing to the fact that the ropes had been 
thrown from behind, this gave the beast twenty 
yards of slack, more than enough to give him time 
to reach me, and one blow from those feet would 
finish me. Just at that instant, the big tusker, who 
had been pounding up behind, saw what was hap¬ 
pening, and at the mahout’s orders, he charged. 
The head of the tusker, held low, countered the 
head of the young wild elephant with a shock that 
made me expect to see both skulls crushed in. The 


158 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


young bull was thrown clear over, panting, and the 
old tusker stood there over him, his left tusk point¬ 
ing slightly downward with a menacing gesture, 
ready to drive the vicious weapon into the new 
captive at the mahout’s slightest order. There was 
no need. The tether ropes were put on him in a 
few seconds, and the young bull had lost his liberty 
forever. 

“ The next job was to take off the slip-knots from 
the half-strangled bull elephant, a piece of work 
which I did not attempt, since my strained wrist 
was now beginning to pain me a good deal. The 
ropes had cut deeply into the elephant’s flesh, and 
this freeing performance is sometimes dangerous 
enough. But once the ropes were free, the young 
bull was allowed to get on his feet. He could not 
run fast, now, for his feet were hobbled.” 

“ You let him go, then! ” exclaimed Spencer, in 
surprise. 

“ Absolutely free, except for the tether-ropes, or 
hobbles.” 

“ But what good would that do? He wouldn’t 
follow you home, like a dog, would be? ” 

“ Us, no! But that’s where the affectionate dis¬ 
positions come in that I was telling you about. As 
soon as the ‘ khoonkies ’ moved away, two or three 


CAPTURING ELEPHANTS 159 


gentle-mannered cow elephants sidled up to the 
captive and explained to him, elephant fashion, 
how sorry they were for him and how much better 
off he would be if he accompanied them. 

“ I don’t know the nature of their' arguments, 
Spencer, but I know that the captive, in such cases, 
usually lets himself be persuaded. If he shows 
fight, and turns on one of his new-found affectionate 
companions, the tusker, who has been kept in 
readiness, will give him a prod in the ribs with a 
long, grimly sharp tusk. That brings him to his 
senses. Either sulkily or willingly, the captive sub¬ 
mits, and with a tame elephant on either side of 
him, he is marched off to a temporary stockade, 
where the tame elephants keep guard. When half 
a dozen or so wild ones have been captured, they 
are taken to a permanent camp, where they are 
broken in.” 

“And wild elephants, right out of the jungles, 
like that, can be broken in? ” 

“ Quite easily. The Indian elephant is naturally 
docile, to begin with, and he is exceedingly intelli¬ 
gent, besides. For a third thing, the herd instinct 
is strong in them. Elephants—except ‘rogues’— 
seldom go alone. They travel in herds and in abso¬ 
lute obedience to a leader. When they find 


160 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


themselves in a tame herd, they obey the new 
ways readily enough and, indeed, seem to enjoy 
work.” 

“ Then there’s no real difficulty in taming ele¬ 
phants? ” 

“ Only at first. Generally, by the ‘ khoonkie ’ 
method, the captives are fairly well quieted by the 
time they get to the home stockade. 

“ But, in some cases, herds of elephants are 
simply stampeded into a keddah, or enormous 
strong stockade, which is approached by a V-shaped 
fence about two miles long and half a mile wide at 
the broader end. The stockade is built to stand the 
strain, but nothing could resist the pressure of a 

herd of elephants if once the animals got fairly 

✓ 

started. When they try to break it down, or to 
dash through, they are stopped by sharp spears or 
blazing torches, the men being three deep outside 
the stockade. Generally twenty-four hours of this 
is enough to quiet the beasts. They’ve got sense 
enough to know when they’re beaten. 

“ Then ‘ khoonkies ’ are sent into the stockade, 
the desired animals are taken and the older ones 
set free, to increase and multiply. Very rarely do 
domesticated animals, which have been caught half- 
grown, go ‘ wild ’ again. Once put in a place 


CAPTURING ELEPHANTS 161 

where fodder and water are plentiful, the younger 
elephants become very easy to handle.” 

“ And isn’t the African elephant ever tamed? ” 

“ Never; at least, not that I ever heard of. I 
imagine an African cow elephant might be handled 
by half a dozen well-trained Indian elephants, 
especially if there were a good tusker near by. But 
you must remember, Spencer, that African cow ele¬ 
phants, unlike Indian elephants, are heavily ivoried, 
and might well be a match for the most aggressive 
Indian tusker. They are less intelligent, more 
savage, vastly more powerful, and almost invariably 
get ill-tempered as they grow older. As for trying 
to put them in stockades, I doubt if any construc¬ 
tion could be made in the African jungles that an 
African bull elephant couldn’t put down. 

“ Of course, one can never tell, but all the hunters 
with whom I have spoken assert the intractability 
of the African elephant. He is good for ivory, and 
that is all. If you’re looking for adventure, my boy, 
go and ‘ broncho-bust ’ an African bull elephant. 
But insure your life, first! ” 


CHAPTER IX 


A TRUNKED DEITY 

A few days later, only a couple of hundred miles 
away from the Golden Gate of San Francisco, Spen¬ 
cer pleaded again for some more elephant talk, for, 

* 

on this subject, he could never have enough. 

“ Mr. Beaverway,” he asked, “ do elephants re¬ 
member; have they real memories, I mean? Are 
they really faithful to their masters, as a dog is? 
Some books say they are, and some say not.” 

“ It depends upon the elephant—and on the mas¬ 
ter,” the Anglo-Indian replied, with a slight smile. 
“ They make wonderful nurse-maids, and a little 
baby put in their care is ten times safer than with 
the most careful‘ ayah ’ (nurse). There are plenty 
of cases, too, where an elephant has seemed to show 
an entire disregard of his master, but my experience 
has been that this occurs only where the man does 
not understand the animal. An elephant is exceed¬ 
ingly sensitive, and some of them appear to be pos¬ 
sessed of an almost human intelligence, and their 
own second sight into the bargain. 

“ You’re hungry for stories, Spencer, I know. I’d 

162 





Copyright by Brown Brothers. 

Strength, intelligence, fidelity. 

Elephants towing logs in India. 








Courtesy of Hutchinson & Co. Drawn by Winifred Austin. 


Elephant herd crossing the Zambesi River. 




A TRUNKED DEITY 


163 


tell you the story of Badshah, the King Elephant, 
myself, if it weren’t that Colonel Brayce, over there, 
knows it far better than I do. Come, my boy, let 
us see if he’s in the mood to spin you the yarn.” 

“ Oh, he will, I’m sure,” declared Spencer. “ He’s 
an awfully nice chap! ” 

“ You know him already, do you? Is there any¬ 
body on this boat you don’t know? ” 

“ Everybody’s been ever so nice on board! ” the 
boy replied indirectly. 

“ Sorry to disturb you, Colonel Brayce,” said the 
teak merchant, as they came near the old soldier’s 
steamer chair, “ but our young mammoth-hunter 
here can’t sleep o’ nights.” 

“ Why? ” 

“ At least, not until he hears about Badshah.” 

The colonel groaned. 

“ And I must stop an interesting book to tell him 
the story, eh? Why don’t you tell him, yourself, 
Beaver way? ” 

“ I don’t like handling second-hand goods. And 
you knew Major Carrick well, better than anybody 
in India, perhaps.” 

The colonel looked at the boy with an air of 
mock despair. 

“ If I must, I suppose I must,” he agreed. “ I did 


164 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


know Carrick. Well, draw up a chair, Beaverway, 
and prompt me if I forget.” 

“ It’s because the lad asked me if elephants were 
faithful,” the merchant explained. 

“ A high-caste elephant,” said the colonel, seri¬ 
ously, “ has more brains than half a dozen ordinary 
men, and he possesses, besides, some kind of occult 
sense which far outstrips anything that our poor 
humanity understands. I’m not surprised that the 
Hindus made him into a god. Unless one accepts 
some kind of mystical theory, there’s no explaining 
Badshah, and if you want to hear about a most un¬ 
canny case of faithfulness, why, Badshah’s story is 
perhaps the most remarkable in the annals of India. 

“ This story happened during one of the perennial 
uprisings along the Northwest Frontier. For politi¬ 
cal reasons, I won’t say exactly when, or where. 
The rebellion promised to turn into a very tidy 
little frontier war, which might easily have cost the 
lives of fifty thousand men, and it was put to an 
end by the almost supernatural brain and intelli¬ 
gence of a single elephant. 

“ Some of the happenings of that little war have 
been written long and large by an English novelist, 
Gordon Casserly, and his book ‘ The Elephant God ’ 
is very good reading. Although I knew Major Car- 


A TRUNKED DEITY 


165 


rick and his famous one-tusker very well, there 
were a good many points about Badshah in that 
book which were new to me. Casserly may have 
invented them—I don’t doubt that he did—for pur¬ 
poses of romance, but the background is certainly 
true. It may seem strange for an old military man 
to be fond of novels, but I’ll confess that I’ve read 
that book several times, mainly, I’ll admit, for the 
sake of Badshah. To avoid confusion, I’ll set the 
scene where Casserly did, near a fort on the Bhutan 
frontier; its name is of no importance. 

“ Major Carrick, Commandant of this fort, was 
jungle-wise, in every sense of the word. There are 
men who are born that way. His fame as a shikarri 
(hunter) was widely spread. Fellows said that his 
luck was uncanny, but no one ever denied that he 
was a sportsman of the first water. He was a good 
soldier—I never had a better officer—and he would 
have made a prime statesman if he had not entered 
the Army. The natural consequence was that, 
when a Bhutan uprising was suspected along the 
line of the Terai Forest, Carrick was sent there on 
the double duty of Commandant of a small fort 
and as a secret Political Agent. You see, as a 
famous hunter, he would soon win the esteem of 
the natives, and would be able to travel into out- 


166 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


lying parts of the jungle to get big game and in¬ 
formation at the same time.” 

“ What fun! ” exclaimed Spencer. 

“ Yes, for those who know how; but it’s a quick 
death in the darkness for those who don’t. Car- 
rick was one of those people that romancers tell you 
about who bore a ‘ charmed life ’ ; myself, I’ve gen¬ 
erally found that the men of that kind are those 
who have their heads most firmly screwed on their 
shoulders. There was—but I won’t tell you that 
tale. We will come to Badshah. 

“ Not very long after his arrival at his new post, 
Carrick discovered the presence of a most amazingly 
powerful elephant, a single-tusker. This magnifi¬ 
cent animal was being employed for ordinary work, 
but Carrick, knowing elephants as few white men 
ever come to know them, realized at once that the 
great beast was a Maharajah among his kind. 
There is a regular elephant aristocracy, I might 
mention, among Indian elephants at least. Per¬ 
haps,” he added, with a smile, “ the Brahmin caste 
system may have infected them. 

“ In any case, Carrick and Badshah chummed up 
from the start. The great elephant, that had al¬ 
ways ignored white men with supreme contempt, 
accepted Carrick—I was going to say as an equal. 


A TRUNKED DEITY 167 

As a matter of fact, it was something very much 
like that. The two became inseparable. This, as 
Fate willed—for no one can live long in India with¬ 
out coming to believe that there is some queer kind 
of Fate—was of the greatest service to Carrick. 
Being able to dispense with a mahout (driver) he 
could go out into the forest, alone, bareback, on 
Badshah, and his expeditions were rarely fruitless. 

“ Now Badshah—the name means ‘ The King ’— 
had only one tusk, the right one; the other had 
never grown. Such animals are not very numerous, 
but such as do reach large size are especially revered 
by the natives, since Gunesh, their God of Wisdom, 
is always pictured with an elephant’s tusk, the right 
one. When, moreover, such elephants are high- 
caste, when, in addition, they show those special 
powers which the natives call the ‘ two-sight sense/ 
then the Hindus are very apt to confuse the differ¬ 
ence between the animal and the god. 

“ It would make too long a story to tell you of 
all the apparently miraculous doings of Major Car¬ 
rick and Badshah. He told me himself—hard as 
it was to screw anything out of him—that Badshah 
had saved him from the charge of a ‘rogue’ ele¬ 
phant, and that the ‘ rogue/ on realizing in whose 
presence he was, had fled with a squeal of terror. 


168 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

It is on record, too, that, in return, Carrick saved 
Badshah from the attack of a hamadryad, or king 
cobra, seventeen feet long, the only snake which 
will wantonly attack. And, fast as an elephant can 
run, a snake can go faster. 

“ If you want to read of Carrick’s amazing ride 
to the elephant cemetery, where all the aged ele¬ 
phants go to find their death in peace, read Cas- 
serly. Carrick never told me anything about it, 
and though nine persons out of ten believe in ele¬ 
phant cemeteries, I’ve never met any one, white or 
native, who has seen one. The story may be true, 
for all that. What I do know a little about is the 
part that Badshah took in putting down the trouble 
along the frontier. I couldn’t very well help know¬ 
ing that; Carrick was bound to report it. The story 
was almost incredible, but the facts were beyond 
dispute. 

“ The Bhutanese, backed by the Chinese, who, in 
their turn, were backed by the Russian Soviet Gov¬ 
ernment, had been busy for a couple of years in 
sowing disaffection among some of the smaller 
rajahs of Bengal. One of the most active was—I 
will give the fictitious name—the Rajah of Lalpuri. 
His hatred against the English was especially 
venomous, so I have been told, because an English 



A TRUNKED DEITY 169 

girl refused to marry him, in spite of all his wealth; 
quite naturally. 

“ It’s not my business to spin you a love story— 
though Carrick married this very girl eventually— 
but it is worth noting that when some Bhutan 
raiders attacked the plantation where this girl was 
living—presumably some scoundrels in the Rajah’s 
pay—and carried her off, Badshah tracked the 
raiders and enabled Carrick to rescue the girl. 
There’s really nothing so extraordinary in that, for 
an elephant’s scent is preternaturally keen, and, as 
a tracker, he is beyond compare. What Badshah 
did is quite possible. 

“ The sensational part of the story comes now. 
One night, Badshah broke loose from his pickets— 
as was his habit, occasionally. When Carrick went 
out to see what was the trouble, and to order Bad¬ 
shah back to the lines, the elephant promptly set 
the man on his back and started off into the jungle 
on some spree of his own. He travelled fast all that 
night, and all next morning, into a part of the forest 
where Carrick had never been. By noon Badshah 
reached a grassy valley, where—apparently wait¬ 
ing for him—there was a herd of wild elephants, all 
bulls, over a hundred in number. Later figures— 
those of the natives—put this herd at several hun- 



170 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


dred, but I doubt it. A hundred wild elephants at a 
time is enough. 

“ These elephants—don’t forget what I told you 
about aristocracy—at once and without question 
accepted Badshah as their leader or king. The 
single-tusker stood motionles while his subjects 
filed in review before him, and each one touched 
Major Carrick lightly with the tip of its trunk, ele¬ 
phant fashion, to get the scent for later recognition. 
To all intents and purposes, the wild elephants ac¬ 
cepted the man as a sort of co-partner of their King. 
Doesn’t sound possible, does it? ” 

“ I’m beginning to think that anything is possible 
with elephants, sir,” the boy responded. 

“ That’s a sane point of view to start on. Skep¬ 
ticism is a thing which does not sit happily on any 
man’s shoulders. 

“ Well, I asked Carrick about this, of course. He 
pooh-poohed my way of putting the question, but 
he did not deny that the thing had happened. And, 
of course, the history of what comes after proves 
that it must have happened. I’ll get on with the 
yarn a bit faster. 

“ On more than a score of occasions, villagers in 
the most remote districts had seen Carrick riding 
on Badshah. Three several times, the herd of wild 


A TRUNKED DEITY 


171 


elephants had been seen following the leader and 
his driver. Badshah being a Gunesh elephant, the 
report spread far and wide that Gunesh, the god, 
was actually wandering in the forest, in the guise of 
an elephant. It certainly was noted that, after 
Carrick’s visit to any village, if riding on Badshah, 
the villagers thereafter were left in peace and no 
wild elephant molested their crops. This one fact, 
alone, kept the peoples of the Terai Forest in sub¬ 
jection, and the fear which his presence produced 
enabled Carrick to secure a vast amount of most 
valuable secret information. 

“ The conspiracy proved to be infinitely larger 
than it had seemed at the first. All the Pathan 
tribes along the frontier were blood-hungry and 
especially loot-hungry. The Afghans, armed by the 
Soviets and officered by Russianized Germans, were 
threatening the Khyber Pass. The Chinese were 
pushing the Bhutans forward, and sending some 
semi-disciplined troops themselves. In the Punjaub 
and the Bengals, sedition was, as usual, the order of 
the day.” 

“ I beg your pardon, sir,” Spencer interrupted, 
“ but is India always like that? ” 

“ On the Northwest Frontier, it is, most of the 
time. And, all through India there is a very strong 



172 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

‘ Nationalist’ sentiment, as the politicians call it. 
That may be the right name, but you see, my boy, 
a soldier is bound to look only at one side, so I 
call it ‘ sedition/ There always was, always is, and 
always will be sedition in India. It is not neces¬ 
sarily more against British rule than against any 
other. There are too many different races, too many 
languages, too many religions, too many castes, too 
many conflicting interests for any government to be 
able to satisfy them all. India, returned to native 
hands—never matter whose—would not be a gov¬ 
ernment at all; it would be bloody chaos. At least, 
that’s my opinion. 

“ Well, with-the Afghans threatening down the 
Khyber Pass, with the Chinese pushing the Bhu- 
tans forward, with Soviet Russia and Germany be¬ 
hind both, and with a great deal of disaffection in 
India itself, you can see that Carrick’s position was 
certainly one of honorable danger. 

“ Not very long after, Carrick was saved—so the 
story runs—from a plot against his life devised by 
the Rajah of Lalpuri, saved because a ‘ rogue ’ ele¬ 
phant, an outlaw from Badshah’s band, recognized 
him. The assassin who had been hired to manipu¬ 
late the affair fell into such superstitious terror, 
and became such an abject worshipper of Badshah 



A TRUNKED DEITY 


173 


and his rider, that he blurted out all the details of 
the Rajah’s plot. These details fitted in with other 
clues which Carrick had secured and with private 
information which we possessed at headquarters, 
thus enabling us to get a general grasp of the whole 
movement. 

“ Some secret documents which fell into our 
hands—the international conspiracy which they re¬ 
vealed is well known to Beaverway here—gave us 
the opportunity to put down with great prompti¬ 
tude the outbreaks of revolt in the Punjaub and the 
Bombay Presidency. That revolt ”—the soldier 
smiled contentedly—“ lasted just exactly one after¬ 
noon. But there is no doubt that we should have 
been quite in the dark had it not been for Carrick 
and Badshah. And, for the North—remembering 
Kipling’s famous line—‘ guns, always guns ’—we 
sent up some mountain artillery to the frontier. 
But though we were in some measure prepared, we 
did not know that the expected invasion would take 
place as early as it did. 

“ Chinese regulars and hordes of Bhutanese— 
good fighting men—rushed the frontier fort where 
Carrick and Badshah had their headquarters. The 
fort held out gallantly for three days against over¬ 
whelming odds which ought to have taken it in 





174 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


three hours. No reinforcements could be expected 
for ten days at least. Some one must try to get 
through. Two attempts had been made, but both 
messengers had been caught and tortured to death. 

“ Carrick held all the threads. If he could win, 
he could be more useful than any other man. 
In the dark of the night, he mounted Badshah, 
and, in one wild burst of speed, dashed through the 
enemy’s lines. Guards were posted, but that did 
them little good. The sentries never knew what 
had happened. Three were pounded to death under 
Badshah’s feet and the fourth died next day. So 
Carrick got through.” 

“ Great stuff! I’d like to see that Badshah! ” 
cried the boy. 

“You will notice, Spencer,” the colonel con¬ 
tinued, “ that, save for the acceptation of Carrick 
by the wild elephants as a sort of co-king with Bad¬ 
shah, the story so far runs along natural lines. But 
I’ll give you something, presently, to feed your ap¬ 
petite for wonder. 

“ Having got through the enemy’s lines, Carrick 
turned Badshah toward the nearest fortified post 
and bade him run. But Badshah, most obedient of 
elephants, paid not the slightest heed to the master 
whom he usually obeyed at a word, or even an un- 


A TRUNKED DEITY 


175 


spoken thought, for there was a strong telepathy 
between the two. 

“ Disregarding pressure of hand and knee—Car- 
rick never used an ankus, or steel goad, on his ele¬ 
phant comrade—Badshah struck off at an entirely 
different angle. Ignoring paths, he cut straight 
through the low forest, and, after five hours of swift 
going, crossed the clearings of a frontier tea planta¬ 
tion, where he knelt abruptly for Carrick to dis¬ 
mount. 

“ This was directly in front of a bungalow, against 
which a small body of rebellious villagers was ad¬ 
vancing to the attack. The major dashed in, at 
once, adding one more defender to the little group 
of half a dozen white men who were there to resist 
the assault. 

“ Badshah, without even so much as a contempt¬ 
uous look at the rebels, lurched to his feet, turned, 
and sped into the forest even faster than before. 
When an elephant chooses to go, he can make thirty 
miles an hour through dense forest growth, twenty- 
five miles, quite easily. And no one has ever seen 
an elephant get tired. 

“ Dawn came, three hours later. Thanks to Car- 
rick’s leadership and marksmanship, the rebel vil¬ 
lagers—who had been stirred to revolt by seditious 




176 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

Brahmins—were beaten back. They had little 
stomach for serious fighting. 

“ Toward noon, however—remember that Bad- 
shah had left nine hours before!—the entire ‘ army ’ 
of the Rajah of Lalpuri arrived, including a body of 
well-armed irregular cavalry. It was the Rajah’s 
intention to seize the plantation and use it as a 
strategic base, then to march upon the fort which 
Carrick had been defending and take it from the 
rear, to annihilate the small garrison of British and 
loyal native troops there—no difficult matter since 
the fort would be caught between two fires—and 
thus open the whole of that part of the frontier to 
invasion. 

“ The plot was well conceived and neatly timed— 
the Rajah’s son was an Oxford graduate, and the 
commander of his troops was a Germanized Bul¬ 
garian who had been on the staff of a German army 
corps during the World War. Had the plan suc¬ 
ceeded, it would have taken us a good three years of 
constant fighting to regain the Pass, to say nothing 
of the loss of prestige, and prestige is the strongest 
of all weapons when dealing with native peoples. 

“ The Rajah offered conditions of surrender, for 
he was anxious not to be delayed. Of course, being 
a soldier, Carrick refused; the British Army does 



A TRUNKED DEITY 


177 


not surrender to rebels. The enemy charged, the 
cavalry leading, but were beaten back. Successive 
small charges were repulsed, but to do so entailed 
a terrible drain on the ammunition, which was the 
reason that General Satchich—I think that was his 
name—sent the men forward. It was only a mat¬ 
ter of time until all the ammunition of the de¬ 
fenders would be exhausted, and that would be the 
end, for the attackers were several hundred to one. 

“ But, before the rebels could push their advan¬ 
tage, a miracle came to pass. No, that’s not too 
strong a word! 

“ Suddenly, the rush halted. A paralyzed silence 
fell on the whole of the Rajah’s motley following. 
Every man turned his eyes away from the bun¬ 
galow and gazed at the forested hills sloping slowly 
upward beyond the plantation. There was reason 
to look. 

“ ‘ From the far-off forest,’ Casserly describes it, 
‘ bursting out at every point of the long-stretching 
wall of dark undergrowth that hemmed in the wide 
estate, wild elephants appeared. Over the furrowed 
acres they streamed in endless lines, trampling 
down the ordered stretch of green tea-bushes. In 
scores, in hundreds, they came, silently, slowly; the 
great heads nodding to the rhythm of their gait, the 
trunks swinging, the ragged ears flapping as they 
advanced. Converging as they came, they drew 



178 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

together in a solid mass that blotted out the 
ground, dark, relieved only by flashes of gleaming 
white. For on either side of every massive skull 
jutted out the sharp-pointed curving ivory. 

“ ‘ Of all save one! 

“ 4 For the leader that led them, the splendid 
beast that captained the oncoming array of Titans, 
under the ponderous strokes of whose feet the earth 
trembled, had one tusk, one only. And, toward the 
place where the Rajah of Lalpuri and his officers 
stood, he moved unerringly, the immense earth- 
shaking phalanx following him. 

“ ‘ The awestruck crowds of armed men, so lately 
flushed with the fanatical lust of slaughter, stood as 
though turned to stone, their faces set toward the 
terrifying onset. Their pains unheeded, their 
groans silenced, the wounded staggered to their feet 
to look. Even the dying strove to raise themselves 
on their elbows from the reddened soil to gaze, and 
gazing, fell back dead. Slowly, mechanically, si¬ 
lently, the living gave way, the weapons dropping 
from their nerveless grip. 

“ ‘ Nothing was heard, save the dull thunder of 
the giant feet. Then, from the village, the high- 
pitched shriek of a woman pierced the air and shat¬ 
tered the eerie silence of the terror-stricken crowds. 
Murmurs, groans, swelled into wild shouts, yells, 
the appalling uproar of panic: and strong and 
weak, hale men and those from whom the life-blood 
dripped, turned and fled. Fled past their dead 
brothers, past the little group of leaders whose 
power to sway them had vanished before this awful 
menace. 

Petrified, rooted to the ground as though their 
quaking limbs were incapable of movement, the 


179 


A TRUNKED DEITY 

Rajah and his satellites stood motionless before the 
oncoming elephants. One, the renegade Hindu who 
had betrayed the plantation, raised a pistol in his 
trembling hand and fired at Badshah. The next 
instant the huge tusk caught him. He was struck 
to the earth, gored, and lifted high in air. An ap¬ 
palling shriek burst from his lips. He was hurled 
to the ground with terrific force and trodden under 
foot. The Rajah screamed shrilly and turned to 
flee. Too late! The great phalanx moved on faster 
and passed without checking over the white-clad 
group, blotting them out of all semblance to hu¬ 
manity.’ Such was the end of the Rajah of 
Lalpuri and his plotting, so ended the principal 
head of that many-headed snake of conspiracy 
which menaced India.” 

“ And it was Badshah, sir, all alone, who had got 
the wild elephants and organized them, like that? ” 

“All wild elephants are organized into herds. All 
will follow and obey their leader. All will take as 
personal enemies, the enemies of their leader. But 
can any one explain how Badshah knew that the 
plantation was menaced, or how he knew that the 
enemies of his master were marching toward the 
place in numbers too strong to be resisted? How 
does news travel in the jungle? Who can tell? 
But Badshah knew! ” 

“And the fort—you have forgotten the fort, 
Colonel! ” Beaverway suggested. 

“ There was nothing especially mysterious in 


180 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


that. No sooner were the Rajah and his followers 
smeared on the ground, as a man smears a noxious 
insect on the ground with his foot, than Badshah 
placed Carrick on his back for all to see, and Car- 
rick led his wild elephant army northward to the 
beleaguered fort. By some extraordinary mixture 
of heroism and fate, it still held, although the am¬ 
munition was all but exhausted. The few survivors 
of the doomed post watched. The attackers slept; 
they could afford to wait till morning, the end was 
sure. 

“ But most of that army of Chinese and 
Bhutanese never saw the morning. At dead of 
night, a hundred, two hundred, several hundred 
wild elephants—nobody knows how many—came 
ponderously rushing out of the forest on that rebel 
camp, came to slay and to slay. Few, very few, 
lived to tell the tale. The tusks of a hundred ele¬ 
phants were reddened to the sockets, the huge legs 
splashed to the thighs in blood. There was no 
mercy shown that day. 

“ Into the farthest recesses of the mountains, the 
wild elephants pursued their human prey, and, for 
a week after, any trembling fugitive might find a 
monster fury following on his track. Those who 
did escape, perhaps two hundred out of as many 


A TRUNKED DEITY 


181 


thousands, bore back to China and to Bhutan a tale 
which will hold the frontier quiet for many a year 
to come. 

“ But Badshah, his duty done, remained quietly 
at the fort while Carrick nursed the wounded and 
resumed command of the tiny garrison which had 
held firm to the last shot. Badshah had done honor 
to his elephanthood. More, he had shown his 
friendship to his master. To his master, no! To 
his brother and his equal! ” 


CHAPTER X 


GORED TO DEATH 

“ There is not any ‘ best * rifle for elephant¬ 
shooting, Mr. ‘ Hunter ’ Wolland, as you know very 
well, and when this young gentleman says that he 
wants a gun that will stop a charging bull elephant, 
I have only one reply to give.” 

“And that is? ” 

“ That you can stop an elephant with a squirrel 
rifle—more or less—if you strike the exact spot, and 
that you cannot stop him with a cannon-ball if you 
do not.” 

The speaker, standing in a dingy little shop in a 
side street just off Oxford Street, in London, was a 
man whose name is well-known to the fraternity of 
big-game sportsmen all over the world. Although 
Spencer and his father had brought American rifles 
with them, “ Hunter ” Wolland knew better than to 
pass through London without taking counsel of the 
veteran gun-maker. 

“ There are two kinds of elephant-hunting,” he 

went on to say, “ or, gentlemen, if you prefer it, 

two kinds of elephant-hunters. One is after ivory, 

and the other is after sport. The first seeks as 

182 


GORED TO DEATH 


183 


little adventure as possible, the second, if I may 
say so, more than any man ought to risk.” 

“ But is there much risk in modern elephant¬ 
hunting? ” queried the boy. “ I've been told that, 
with modern weapons, you can grass an elephant 
at half a mile.” 

“ The day you succeed in doing that, young 
gentleman, I shall have great pleasure in making 
you a gift of the finest gun in my shop! I am not 
a hunter, myself, but I think I may say that I have 
had the honor of knowing nearly all, if not all, the 
elephant-hunters of the last forty and fifty years. 
By far the greater part of them would never have 
fired a shot, if it were not for the risk; the danger 
lends the thrill.” 

“ But have many hunters been killed by ele¬ 
phants? ” 

“ Yes, a great many, that is, in proportion to the 
men engaged in the sport. Of my personal ac¬ 
quaintance I can remember fifteen or twenty men 
killed by elephants.” 

“Always when wounded?” 

“ I can only recall a single instance happening to 
a well-known elephant-hunter, when an animal 
charged, unprovoked, excepting, always, that very 
rare exception, a man-killing ‘ rogue/ ” 


184 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


\ 


“And what was that one, Mr. Nisser? ” 

“ It was one of the adventures that fell to the lot 
of Major C. H. Stigand, and he enjoyed—I say ‘ en¬ 
joyed ’ deliberately, for he seemed to enjoy them 
—more extraordinary adventures with wild ani¬ 
mals than any other hunter I have had the honor 
to know. 

“ It happened in the Lado Enclave, Soudan, a 
good many years ago. An elephant, perhaps a 
‘ rogue/ but not so known, had been raiding the 
native crops, and Major Stigand, wanting to see 
whether or not it were a beast worth shooting, 
strolled out past the mealie-patches, after supper, 
to take a look at the animal. He was so imprudent 
as to go without his rifle. As soon as the animal 
saw him, it charged and knocked him down, driving 
one of its tusks through the fleshy part of the thigh. 
Then the elephant picked up Stigand with its trunk 
and threw him some fifteen or twenty yards away. 
Generally, in such cases, an elephant is satisfied 
with that, but, in this case, the beast followed up 
to the place where its victim had fallen. Knowing 
that his only chance was to remain perfectly still, 
Stigand controlled every nerve, and, after smelling 
him with its trunk, the elephant went away on the 
run; a ‘ rogue ’ would have gored again.” 


GORED TO DEATH 


185 


“And he got better? ” 

" Who? Major Stigand, you mean? Oh, yes; he 
was badly smashed up, but, the year following, he 
was back again in Africa, elephant-hunting.” 

“ But I thought elephants always trampled on 
their victims! ” exclaimed Spencer, thinking of the 
story of Badshah’s herd. 

“ On the contrary, I believe it is very rare, except 
when an animal is enraged. African elephants, at 
least, pierce with their tusks, pinning a man to the 
ground. Nearly all the fatalities to elephant-hunt¬ 
ers, in Africa, have been of this character, and 
nearly all are due to the fact that the hunter’s first 
shot did not strike a vital point. 

“ It is a curious thing, Mr. Wolland,” he added, 
turning to Spencer’s father, “ and I should like to 
know whether you have noticed it, that, if the first 
shot is not fatal, an elephant seems to be able to 
support later shots without collapsing immediately, 
even though the later shots are vital.” 

“ I’ve had that experience twice,” said The 
Hunter, “ but, luckily for me, both times the animal 
swerved at my second shot.” 

“Yes, I am told that is the rule: ‘ stand your 
ground and shoot! ’ But even that is not certain. 
A very good hunter, Mr. Johnstone, as I remember, 


186 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


was killed in Nyasaland, by an elephant bull which 
he had wounded, apparently vitally, with a solid 
bullet from a powerful black powder Express rifle. 
He gave the animal a second shot, as it charged, 
and this reached the heart, but, for some reason or 
other, this second shot, although vital, failed either 
to turn or to stop the charging bull. 

“ The animal came straight on, knocked John¬ 
stone down with a front kick of the forefoot and 
pinned him to the ground. The bull then drove 
its tusks clear through the hunter’s body, and 
struck, apparently, a stone or rock beneath. The 
bull staggered on and fell dead, fifty yards 
farther. 

“As was found out, afterwards, both shots had 
struck vital points, and, by all the rules of shooting, 
that bull should have fallen in its tracks, but it 
didn’t. When Johnstone’s beaters brought in his 
kit and the tusks, the ivory was all stained with 
blood, and one of the tusks was splintered from the 
force with which the bull had pinned its victim to 
the ground.” 

“ Do elephants kick, then? ” exclaimed the boy, 
surprised. “ I didn’t know that.” 

“ So I am told. Mr. James B. Yule, another well- 
known hunter, was kicked and then killed in the 


GORED TO DEATH 


187 


same way. Certainly, he did not lack for experi¬ 
ence, and, from all accounts, he was a very pretty 
big-game shot. He wounded an animal which 
charged him with a scream—a rather unusual pro¬ 
ceeding, for an animal intent on harm generally 
comes silently—and which kicked him down and 
then perforated him with one of the tusks. The 
beaters declared that the elephant, after transfixing 
its victim, paid no further heed to him but looked 
around for the rifle, which it stamped on and threw 
into the bush.” 

“ That doesn’t sound probable,” commented The 
Hunter, dubiously. 

“ My own thought,” agreed the gun-maker. “ If 
an Indian wild elephant had done so, I should not 
have doubted the story, but such an act presupposes 
an amount of intelligence which most hunters would 
not allow to the African elephant. 

“ Generally, when a white hunter is killed by an 
elephant, it is a little difficult to find out the exact 
details, for the native bearers or ‘ boys ’ scatter as 
quickly as they can, to get into cover. Quite an 
interesting account of the killing of a hunter, how¬ 
ever, was given of the death of Mr. H. Schmarsow, 
also in Nyasaland. Mr. Denis Lyell, himself a rep¬ 
resentative hunter and a writer of several books— 



188 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


noteworthy for their freedom from exaggeration— 
found out the details from the bearers. 


“ ‘ Schmarsow was a German who lived, I think, 
at Chiromo in Nyasaland,’ Lyell wrote. ‘ I believe 
he had shot quite a few elephants and a good many 
other animals. He had gone to Mashinjiri, a place 
I know well, to look for elephants, as they often 
used to roam round that part. It seems he had got 
up to a herd composed only of females, which be¬ 
came frightened and ran off. Schmarsow and his 
“ boy ” followed, and came on a bull, which he had 
not seen before, and, close to it, an elephant cow 
with her calf. 

“ ‘ He is said to have shot at the bull with a .400 
cordite rifle, missed it, and wounded the cow on 
the trunk. Another shot seems to have missed, and 
the animals made off.’ ” 


“Poor shooting! ” commented Spencer. 

The gun-maker turned a shrewd eye on him. 

“ That remark, young gentleman,” he said dryly, 
“ proves that you are not a good shot, yet. Ex¬ 
perienced hunters and canny shots are not at all 
ashamed to admit that they may miss.” 

Properly rebuked, Spencer kept silence, while the 
old man proceeded with the story. 

“ ‘ Schmarsow followed and climbed an ant¬ 
hill -’ ” 

“An ant-hill! ” the boy interrupted. 



GORED TO DEATH 


189 


“ The ant-hills of the termites, or white ants— 
which are not ants nor always white,” interpolated 
Spencer’s father, “ are sometimes fifteen feet in 
height. Termites are insects of extraordinary in¬ 
terest, Son, I’ll tell you about them some day. Ex¬ 
cuse my interrupting, Mr. Nisser! Please go on.” 

“Certainly, certainly! Well, when Schmarsow 
got on the ant-hill, the elephant cow, which had 
stopped, apparently saw him, for she charged at 
once; and Schmarsow, instead of shooting, ran for 
some thick cover about fifty yards away. 

“ ‘ The native “ boy ” who was with him said 
afterwards that the elephant cow rapidly overtook 
the hunter, catching him up within thirty yards. 
She shot out her trunk, seized him by the waist, and 
dashed him to the ground. Then she drove her 
tusks through him, and the ‘ boy,’ who was watch¬ 
ing from some cover in which he was crouching, 
said that she seemed to thrash the body on the head 
with her trunk in her rage. 

“ ‘ After spending some minutes smashing him 
about, she ran off, leaving a piece of her tusk 
twenty-seven inches long sticking in the victim’s 
body; she had broken it when she drove it through 
the body into the baked ground. After the ele¬ 
phant had gone, the “ boy,” who had seen the catas¬ 
trophe, v/ent with one or two others to their mas¬ 
ter’s body, but found him dead. 

“ ‘ There is little doubt,’ comments Lyell, 1 that 
Schmarsow lost his life by running away directly in 


190 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


front of the elephant, for that, alone, is enough to 
make an irascible animal charge. The only thing 
to do in such a case is to shoot, and to keep on 
shooting as long as a cartridge remains in the rifle. 
That is a very good reason why a magazine weapon 
is infinitely more reliable than a double or single¬ 
loader rifle.’ ” 

“ You agree with that, Mr. Nisser? ” queried The 
Hunter. 

“ I make guns and I sell them,” said the veteran, 
“ and I have done so for nearly forty years, but I 
make it a point never to volunteer advice about 
guns to an experienced hunter as to the weapons he 
should use. The issue is too critical; it is the hunt¬ 
er’s life which is at stake. Besides w T hich, big-game 
sportsmen are more fanciful and more fussy over 
rifles than any other man or any woman upon any 
subject on earth! 

“ If you ask my opinion, however, I should say 
that for a powerfully built man, who is not afraid of 
carrying weight, any weapon of the character—say, 
of a .416 magazine Rigby rifle, or a Westley 
Richards double .577 nitro rifle—is very deadly. 
But these run to ten pounds in weight, and most of 
the men I know are agreed that eight pounds is as 
great a weight as most men will carry on a long 
day’s tramp in the tropics. 



GORED TO DEATH 


191 


“ The whole trend, nowadays, is toward the 
small-bore rifle with greater penetration, such as 
the .311 Mauser, the .318 Mannlicher, the .318 
Westley Richards, and the many excellent weapons 
of that type. Such men as Stigand, Bell, Sharpe, 
Lyell and a host of others have shot elephants with 
entire satisfaction with such a small-bore as a .275 
or even a .256. To my mind, that is a little too 
light for elephant work, while a .318 magazine, by 
any absolutely first-class maker, should be heavy 
enough for cool shot.” 

“ The really big guns aren’t used any more then, 
Mr. Nisser? ” queried the boy. 

“0 dear, yes! The Boer hunters still remain 
faithful to the old 4-bore muzzle-loaders, called 
‘ Roers ’ and still load them with a handful of black 
powder. I have often wondered at what must be 
the anatomy of the shoulder of some of those Dutch 
hunters, for the ‘ Roer ’ has a kick like that of a dis¬ 
contented mule. 

“ Mr. F. C. Selous, perhaps the greatest of all the 
great African elephant-hunters, had a nasty acci¬ 
dent with an old ‘Roer’ gun. The gun had mis¬ 
fired, and Selous passed the gun on to a native, with 
instructions to recharge it. The ‘boy’ loaded it 
again on top of the old charge, and, to make sure 


192 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

that it would go off, put in an extra quantity of 
powder.” 

“ My hat! ” exclaimed Spencer. “ I should think 
it would kick! ” 

“ It did, young gentleman; it did. Here is what 
Selous wrote about the accident: 

“ ‘ This time the gun went off: it was a 4-bore 
elephant gun, loaded twice over, and the powder 
thrown in each time with his hands—and I went 
off, too! I was lifted clean off the ground, and, 
turning round in the air, fell with my face in the 
sand, whilst the gun was carried yards away over 
my shoulder. At first I was almost stunned with 
the shock, and I soon found that I could not lift my 
right arm. Besides this, I was covered with blood, 
which spurted from a deep wound under the right 
cheek-bone, caused by the shock of the gun as it 
flew upward from the violence of the recoil. 

“ ‘ The stock itself—though it had been bound 
round, as are all elephant guns, with the inside of 
an elephant’s ear put on green, which, when dry, 
holds as firmly as iron—was shattered to pieces, and 
the only wonder was that the barrel did not burst.’ 

“ But it does not follow that the newer rifles were 
better than the old ones, when they were first man¬ 
ufactured. A. H. Neumann, who is the only ele¬ 
phant-hunter of the old time to compare with 
Selous, was badly mauled by a cow elephant owing 
to the fact that a new .303 jammed. As Neumann 


GORED TO DEATH 


193 


had killed several hundred elephants, with the old- 
style gun, he did not bless the new one. After¬ 
wards, however, he had to adopt the lighter rifle, for 
his injuries were such that he never regained his 
former strength. That did not keep him from fur¬ 
ther elephant-shooting, however. 

“ He seems to have been a very cool shot. It is 
on record that he once bagged fourteen elephants 
in one day, and on another day eleven. He hunted 
mainly in British East Africa, and probably got out 
more ivory than any white man who ever handled 
an elephant-gun in the bush.” 

“ Was he killed at the end, too? ” queried the boy. 

“ No, he gave up in disgust when game preserva¬ 
tion was started in that part of the world. He felt 
that, as the pioneer, he ought to have been given 
special privileges to get his ivory out—since most 
of it was shot in districts where he was the only 
white man who had ever been there—but the au¬ 
thorities could not permit any evasion of the law. 
I never knew exactly how many elephants Neu¬ 
mann shot, but it must have been well over a 
thousand.” 

“ That must be the record! ” 

“ No, there was a Major Rogers, in the days of 
the muzzle-loaders, who bagged over 1,500 ele- 


194 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


phants, all good tuskers, and that in the space of a 
dozen years or so. Remember, young gentleman, 
that, in those days, the elephants were much nearer 
the settlements than they are now, and they were 
much less afraid of man. At the present time, the 
smell of a white man—which an elephant has no 
difficulty in distinguishing from that of a native— 
will send a herd off at a run. Elephant-hunting, 
these days, requires a good deal of stalking. Ele¬ 
phants are wise, you must remember.” 

“Above all,” commented Hunter Wolland, “ it 
requires steady shooting.’’ 

Knowing that this was intended for him, Spen¬ 
cer put in a word. 

“ I got fourteen bulls’-eyes out of twenty, the 
other day,” he boasted. 

The old gun-maker smiled. 

“A crack target shot usually makes the very worst 
kind of elephant-hunter,” he said. “ I shall not 
mention names, but one of the winners at Wimble¬ 
don—what you American gentlemen would call a 
world’s champion—went out with a good elephant- 
hunter in Portuguese East Africa a couple of years 
ago. Both times he encountered elephants—for he 
only tried twice—his bullet failed to reach the fatal 
spot. His life was saved on both occasions by his 




GORED TO DEATH 


195 


partner, and, on the second occasion, the charging 
bull dropped to the ground not more than three 
yards away from him. The partner who, like most 
hunters, was superstitious, refused to risk taking 
him a third time. 

“ You must remember, young gentleman, that 
a target shot has trained himself to perfect steadi¬ 
ness and endeavors to acquire concentration. He 
has plenty of time and there is no danger. The 
big-game shot has trained himself to quickness on 
the snap, and the ability to receive impressions 
from without. He must always act quickly, and 
there is always danger. It is a very different thing 
to lie at full length on a rifle range, and take care¬ 
ful aim, from what it is to bring a rifle to bear 
when one is hungry, thirsty, probably fevered, the 
arms and legs tired and aching from a ten-mile 
tracking of an elephant under an African sun, 
knowing that if the bullet swerves the fraction of a 

degree in its angle, your own immediate death may 

* 

be the consequence! 

“And, if you will permit me to give a warning, 
you must not depend upon the cartridges which re¬ 
main in your magazine rifle. They may be neces¬ 
sary, but, to be sure of your prize, the first shot 
must kill. A well-known elephant-hunter in British 



196 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


East Africa, Mr. Fuller Maitland, was killed by a 
charging bull after having put eight bullets into the 
animal. 

“ Mr. Denis Lyell, a very good authority, declares 
that this is due to the physiological fact that, in 
certain circumstances, a bullet may cause a paral¬ 
ysis of the nervous system, which makes subsequent 
wounds appear innocuous, although the later shots 
might have killed instantly if they had been the 
first. This is also true of the buffalo, I am told, 
but not of the lion/’ 

“ Do you find it the general opinion of most of 
the big-game men, Mr. Nisser, that the Cape buf¬ 
falo is more dangerous than the elephant? ” 

“ I should be inclined to say ‘ Yes/ though it is— 
and probably always will be—a subject of heated 
discussion wherever sportsmen meet. Selous, who 
shot more than two hundred Cape buffalo on foot, 
considered them less dangerous than either the ele¬ 
phant or the lion. Such men as Judd and Sir F. J. 
Jackson, whose words carry weight, declare the 
Cape buffalo to be the ugliest and most vicious 
animal to hunt in all the realm of big game. It is, 
of course, less frequently hunted than the elephant, 
for it has not the attraction of ivory. That ex¬ 
cludes all the professional hunters. But I do know 



GORED TO DEATH 197 

of eight or nine sportsmen who have lost their lives 
to a Cape buffalo.” 

“ It isn’t like our buffalo, is it, Father? ” queried 
Spencer. 

“ No, Son,” came the reply. “ I shot four, when I 
was in Africa, a good twenty years ago. The Cape 
buffalo looks ten times uglier than the American 
buffalo, or bison, and he is as ugly in character as 
he looks. The massive weight of his body, the 
great breadth and thickness of his heavy horns, and 
especially the savage expression of his bloodshot 
eye make a Cape buffalo bull a creature of ferocious 
appearance. Like all creatures, without a single ex¬ 
ception, they will run from Man, but a wounded 
bull buffalo will invariably charge, and he is exceed¬ 
ingly difficult to stop. 

“ I was out hunting with A. M. Naylor, in 1896, 
and he told me of one of his experiences a couple 
of years before. He was out, alone, save for his two 
native boys, on the Manamtoi Plains, when he came 
across a herd of fully seven hundred Cape buffalo, 
together with Burchell’s zebra, some blue wilde¬ 
beest, and hartebeest, each species keeping pretty 
well together. Not being in need of meat, so Nay¬ 
lor told me, and having all the trophies that his 
bearers could carry, he walked forward toward the 


198 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

dense mass of animals, without any intention of 
firing a shot, merely to try their reaction on the 
approach of men. The zebra were the first to run, 
then the hartebeest and the wildebeest, but the 
Cape buffalo remained motionless, their evil-look¬ 
ing heads and wicked wide horns forming a solid 
phalanx.” 

“ I should have been scared, Father! ” declared 
Spencer. 

“ Bad thing, if you had; all wild animals can 
sense, by telepathy, when a hunter is afraid.” 

The gun-maker nodded his head. 

“ Quite true, Mr. Wolland, all my clients say so. 
I could tell you a story about that, but I must not 
interrupt. You were saying-” 

“ Naylor, of course, knew what he was doing, 
and he walked on quietly, hesitatingly followed by 
his two ‘ boys/ At 120 yards the buffalo wheeled, 
suddenly, all together, the horns disappeared, and 
nothing was to be seen but their rumps and wav¬ 
ing tails rapidly retreating in a cloud of dust. 

“ A few weeks later, the camp being in want of 
meat, Naylor, with one ‘ boy/ started out to see if 
he could land some game. From the top of an 
ant-hill he sighted five buffalo on a small patch of 
short grass, feeding toward some heavy thorn and 



GORED TO DEATH 


199 


palm scrub where they probably intended to lie up 
during the heat of the day. He determined to have 
some of them. 

“ Naylor ran through the long grass and came to 
within forty yards of them, without being seen, 
naturally approaching up wind. I think he was 
using a double .500 bore Express, with a soft lead 
solid bullet.” 

“ A fair weapon,” commented the expert, “ but 
there are plenty better.” 

“ With his first barrel he dropped a cow stone 
dead, and, seeing a finely horned mature bull, close 
by, he let it have the other barrel. The bull fell 
motionless, also, for Naylor was not the sort of 
man to miss a shot. He was a very cool hand. He 
reloaded and went forward carefully, for he knew 
that a fallen buffalo does not always mean a dead 
one, and a charging wounded buffalo is a thunder¬ 
ing menace of death. 

“ I might digress to mention that there is nothing 
on this earth more dangerous than to try to fol¬ 
low up a wounded Cape buffalo, which is still able 
to keep on his feet. It possesses a malignant cun¬ 
ning which can only be compared to that giant of 
the weasel family, the Indian Devil or the wol¬ 
verine. It seems to know that it will be followed, 


200 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


and it has an unpleasant little habit of running 
back parallel to its tracks and lying in wait, ready 
to charge when the hunter comes opposite. There 
is no escape, then, for the hunter has scarcely time 
to raise his rifle. Major Price escaped once, simply 
because the buffalo gored the ‘ boy ’ first. What is 
more, even if you do not trail a wounded buffalo, 
he may trail you, in a spirit of revenge, and his 
sense of scent is marvellous. 

“ I knew a case of a hunter who was charged in 
his camp, four hours after he had wounded a Cape 
buffalo. He escaped death by running around a 
tent, and the animal stumbled in the cords. Even 
so, he had his arm slashed open by a sidewise turn 
of the horns, and he would undoubtedly have been 
killed if a ‘ boy/ who had an axe in his hand, had 
not brought it full on the animal’s nose. This 
stopped the brute for a second, and the hunter’s 
partner, snatching out a heavy revolver, fired point- 
blank just behind the shoulder, thus reaching the 
heart. The spread of the horns was just half an 
inch less than four feet. 

“To return to Naylor. After having reloaded, he 
went forward to make sure that both animals were 
dead. The cow was dead, without a doubt. But, 
on getting within twenty yards of the bull, the ani- 


GORED TO DEATH 


201 


mal scrambled to its feet and charged. Twenty- 
yards is not far! But Naylor was an old hand and 
knew how to handle his weapon quickly. A hur¬ 
ried shot aimed at the nose—the only place to aim 
when a buffalo is charging—hit the base of its left 
horn and the bullet glanced off with a loud hum; 
the second barrel drove a bullet through the nose, 
chest, and intestines, smashing the heart, killing it 
instantly, and causing it to turn a complete somer¬ 
sault. The rump of the animal hit Naylor a heavy 
blow in the face and brought him to the ground 
with a bloody nose and cut lips. All this happened 
in about ten seconds, so you see, Spencer, quick 
shooting was necessary.” 

“ And shall we go buffalo-shooting, too, Father? ” 

The Hunter shook his head. 

“ No,” he said, “ I don’t think so. The main 
haunts of the Cape buffalo are in tsetse fly or 
sleeping-sickness districts, and I see no use in run¬ 
ning ourselves deliberately in such a risk. As you 
know, Spencer, the Detroit Museum has asked us 
to secure a family of elephants, from the youngest 
baby to the oldest of all old patriarchs, so we sha’n’t 
have the time for much promiscuous big-game 
hunting. Of course, I shall take specimens of all 
the fauna that come our way.” 



202 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


“ You are going to the Zambesi region, Mr. Wol- 
land? ” 

“ I plan to make for that belt of thorn-bush and 
scattered timber which extends to the west of the 
Shubanga Forest. I am told that elephants have 
been very little disturbed there, and, as I am more 
anxious to make a study of their habits than I am 
to secure ivory, I don’t mind a bit of rough coun¬ 
try.” 

“ And your son accompanies you? ” 

“ Rather! ” declared Spencer. “ And I’m count¬ 
ing on shooting a big bull elephant, all by myself! ” 


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Elephant-trackers from the Belgian Congo 



CHAPTER XI 


INTO THE JUNGLE 

In Spencer’s impatience to find himself actually 
following the spoor or trail of an elephant, the jour¬ 
ney from London, through the Suez Canal and 
down the whole of the East Coast of Africa to 
Chinde, at the mouth of the Zambesi River, seemed 
endlessly long. 

He heard many hunting stories on the way, for 
those steamers are the regular means of communica¬ 
tion for African big-game sportsmen, and the boy 
pumped every man he met. Some of the yarns 
he heard were briefly told and obviously true; but 
others were recounted with a richness of imagina¬ 
tion and a flavor of romance which tickled the boy’s 
fancy greatly. These latter were generally cor¬ 
rected, or denied, afterwards, by the boy’s father. 

One traveller gravely informed the lad that the 
Unicorn was still to be found in the wilder parts of 
Africa, and when Spencer refused to believe it, de¬ 
claring that every kind of wild animal which could 
possibly exist was already known to Man, the boy 

was reminded that it is less than thirty years ago 

203 


204 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

since Man first discovered that antelope-like giraffe, 
the okapi. 

An old trader said—and believed—that once, 
when travelling in the jungle, he had seen the 
famous and dreaded songouee, a green serpent seven 
feet long with a head like a rooster, and which 
possesses the faculty of understanding human 
speech, in every language. This belief is held by a 
great many tribes in Africa, especially those in the 
region of the Upper Zambesi. No white man has 
ever seen the songouee, but nearly all native bearers 
hold it in especial dread. 

The same man—he was a shrewd Scotsman, too 
—declared that he himself had been present at a 
Council of Chacma Baboons, where those strange 
creatures held a parliament, made speeches, and 
elected chiefs and judges. As is well known, many 
negro tribes believe the baboons to be human be¬ 
ings who have succeeded in keeping secret the fact 
that they know how to talk, lest the white men 
should enslave them and put them to work. The 
trader reminded Spencer that, in the Sixteenth Cen¬ 
tury, a Portuguese explorer, Luis d’Antarillo, 
gravely brought to Portugal a cargo of baboons and 
had them baptized as Christians, declaring them to 
be human beings possessed by demons. 


INTO THE JUNGLE 


205 


Yet another old-timer in Africa warned Spencer 
that there were whole stretches of the jungle where 
it was unsafe to travel, because of poison-trees and 
poison-bushes. Remembering how virulent a bad 
case of ivy poisoning can be, even in populous set¬ 
tlements in the United States, Spencer thought the 
existence of the fabled Upas-tree to be quite pos¬ 
sible. He did not believe, however, that the pods 
of a certain bean can throw off fine hairs which 
float in the wind and which can work themselves 
through the clothing and set up a really terrible and 
poisonous itching; yet this, later, he found to be 
perfectly true, and the “ chitaizi ” bean proved one 
of his greatest torments in the days to come. 

Finding him equally hungry for information and 
for marvels, various passengers told Spencer of 
jungle terrors, and others of jungle delights; some 
warned him of fever and the dreaded tsetse fly 
that gives sleeping-sickness, while a few declared 
that health and happiness were only to be found in 
the recesses of the forest, far, far from civilization. 
The result was that the boy could scarcely contain 
his eagerness to find out for himself. 

As Spencer had not quite expected that the shore 
of Africa would be peopled by elephants, Cape buf¬ 
falo, and lions, clear down to the water-front, he 


206 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


was in no way disappointed by his first sight of a 
truly African city, Zanzibar. It is still—though 
much changed during the last twenty years—the 
most characteristic capital of negro Africa. No city 
on the continent contains so great a variety of negro 
races, and there is an Arab proverb: “ When you 
play the flute at Zanzibar, all Africa, as far as the 
lakes, dances.” 

Yet, while the color and bustle in the streets 
charmed the boy, while he never wearied of asking 
his father questions as to the tattoo marks, the 
scarred faces, and the varied costumes which were 
to be seen in the streets, he was a trifle disappointed 
to learn that Zanzibar, being on an island, seven¬ 
teen miles from the mainland, had no big-game 
fauna. He could not stroll out and kill a few wild 
elephants before breakfast! 

Great was his delight, therefore, when he heard 
that there was a very respectable herd of hippo¬ 
potamuses on the western shore of the island, in 
the swampy district of the lowlands. He begged to 
be allowed to go to see them, and to take the 
magazine rifle which he had bought from the vet¬ 
eran gun-maker in London. As yet, he had not 
even had a chance to fire it. This latter plea met 
with a decided refusal. 


INTO THE JUNGLE 


207 


“ If, some time, the camp is short of meat,” said 
The Hunter, “ I make no objection to your shoot¬ 
ing a young hippotamus, for the flesh is as tender 
as lamb, and roast hippo tastes even sweeter than 
the best roast pork—which it somewhat resembles 
in flavor—but that is the only condition. Hippos 
are grass- and reed-eaters, pure and simple; they are 
inoffensive creatures, and ask only to be let alone.” 

“ So do elephants,” retorted Spencer. 

The Hunter frowned. 

“ I know, I know,” he said. “ You expect me to 
answer that elephants are sought for their ivory, 
and you would counter with the question whether 
billiard-balls and piano-keys are so essential to the 
human race as to justify the threatened extinction 
of one of the finest races of animals in the world. 
We have talked of that before. 

“ You know my personal point of view. ” It was 
because I came to disbelieve in promiscuous slaugh¬ 
ter, for the sake of sport or gain, that I took up 
scientific work. But the shooting of a hippopota¬ 
mus, save in need for food—hunger justifies any¬ 
thing, since it is self-defense against starvation—is 
something that I will permit no one in my party 
to do. Take a boat and study the hippos as much 
as you like, but do not go too near.” 


208 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


“ You said they were inoffensive.” 

“ They are, but there is no reason deliberately to 
annoy them and to awaken their suspicions by go¬ 
ing too close. There are such things as ‘ rogue ' 
hippopotamuses, though they are comparatively 
rare, and never, under any circumstances, are they 
found with a hippo family. 

“ Quite often, boats are upset by herd hippos, and 
there are several cases on record where an upset 
canoe has been crushed into splinters by a crunch 
of the hippo's huge jaws. But I've never heard of 
even the angriest herd hippo undertaking to attack 
a man thrown into the water. I said a herd hippo, 
remember, not a ‘ rogue.' And, in any case, even if 
you were upset, you couldn’t shoot while swimming. 
No, Spencer, leave your rifle here; you’ll have 
plenty of chance to use it, later.” 

The hippos, indeed, when Spencer came to them, 
looked quite peaceful. There were twenty-two of 
them, a moderate-sized family group, and, as the 
boy arrived at the swamp just at sunset, he found 
the huge animals wakening from their daily sleep 
in the water—their noses only above the surface— 
and beginning to come to dry ground for their 
nightly feed. 

A hippo can eat the third of a haystack at a meal, 




Herd of old hippopotamuses. 



Immature hippopotamuses. 
Note the tick-birds on their backs. 



Hippopotamuses at sunset. 

The spray, resembling the whale’s “blow,” is made by the 
animal as it comes to the surface. 






















Square-mouthed rhinoceros. 

Taken by telephoto from a distance. The tick-birds on the 
animals’ backs have not yet given warning of the 
approach of enemies. 



A SNIFF OF THE MAN-SMELL. RHINOCEROS CHARGING. 

Taken at fifteen yards. 



Courtesy of Wm. Heinemann. Photographs by A. Radcliffe Dugmore. 


Forced to swerve. 

This charging rhinoceros has been hit by a low, raking shot. 
The photographer is only seven yards away. 


INTO THE JUNGLE 


209 


so that, if by any chance a family of them does 
come across growing crops, it can do a great deal of 
damage, not only by what is eaten but also by the 
trampling. Hippos do not like the presence of men, 
however, and have a great objection to fences. 

Hippos prefer well-known feeding-grounds, and 
keep to their own trails. Many of these trails are 
centuries old; wide double trails which are of im¬ 
mense value to travellers who may chance to be 
following the course of a river. Along parts of the 
Zambesi, there are well-beaten hippo paths several 
miles long. 

Rather to Spencer’s surprise, the canoeman pad- 
died quite close to the herd, at least within thirty 
yards, so that he was able to get a really good look 
at the first hippopotamus he had seen outside a 
zoological garden. One of the largest of them let 
out a loud trumpeting bellow which fairly scared 
the boy, and the sight of one, yawning—the hippo¬ 
potamus has the largest mouth of any land animal 
in the world—was distinctly disquieting. One 
old bull hippo gruntingly clambered to a mud-bank 
and stared at the canoe with solemn displeasure, 
but it showed no sign of wanting to make a charge. 

This giant pig—for a hippopotamus is second 
cousin to a pig—was almost five feet high at the 


210 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


shoulders, and thirteen feet long, and thus looked 
formidable enough, despite its peaceable air. The 
hippo has none of the wickedly vindictive appear¬ 
ance which distinguishes the rhinoceros. Full- 
sized hippos are very rarely seen in zoological gar¬ 
dens, their terrific weight making transport difficult. 

As the canoe turned homeward, the moonlight 
disclosed a solitary hippo browsing in the marshy 
grass along the shore. This time, the boatman 
sheered off and made a wide detour. In response 
to the boy’s questions, the headman replied that 
it might be a “ rogue,” soured by solitude and dan¬ 
gerous, even to the point of attacking without 
provocation. Spencer was glad that he had not 
brought his rifle with him, for the temptation to 
shoot a “rogue” hippopotamus might have been 
too great to be resisted, and his father was not the 
man to overlook disobedience. 

From Zanzibar, Spencer and his father, with a 
Matabele guide and interpreter, named Mbumbwe, 
continued on a coast steamer to Chinde. This place 
is a comparatively modern seaport on the Chinde 
mouth of the Zambesi River, the only navigable en¬ 
trance of that many-mouthed flood. 

At Chinde, Mr. Wolland hired a flat-bottomed 
boat, the after part of the hold of which was ar- 


INTO THE JUNGLE 


211 


ranged for the two Americans, and the forward part 
by the crew. Mbumbwe lived forward, naturally, 
but he spent most of his time aft. He was a famous 
Matabele hunter and interpreter who had done 
little else, all his life, but act as a guide to white 
elephant-hunters. He spoke English fairly well, 
knew all the negro languages, had a great reputa¬ 
tion as a tracker, and was a deadly shot. His rifle— 
which two thousand dollars would not have bought 
—was the gift of an English sportsman whose life 
he had saved. 

To Spencer, Mbumbwe was a never-ending de¬ 
light. The Matabele had a vast store of jungle lore 
at his fingers’ ends, hunting information of the most 
precise type, and legends by the score. He liked 
nothing so much as showing off his knowledge. 
From the point of view of the expedition’s aims, 
Mbumbwe was a treasure. It was exclusively with 
the hope of being able to find him that Hunter Wol- 
land had gone to London, to interview a famous 
big-game sportsman who engaged the Matabele 
guide for a season, every alternate year. 

As the Lower Zambesi is navigable for 400 miles 
up, as far as the Kebrabaza. Rapids, Spencer had 
plenty of opportunity to see as many hippos as he 
wished. He counted several hundred of them, dur- 


212 


THE TUSIv-HUNTERS 


ing the first few days, and then gave up the enumer¬ 
ation. Crocodiles, of course, there were galore. 
The distant roaring of lions occasionally rumbled 
through the half-silence of a jungle night, and, 
twice, a black rhinoceros was sighted among the 
reeds of the bank. 

It was the last day but one of the trip up river 
that Spencer beheld a sight which he was never to 
see again, which his father had never seen before, 
and which even the captain of the little flat-bot¬ 
tomed Zambesi boat had seen but twice in his life. 

This was a python swimming! 

The huge snake, which, though but half the size 
of his Asiatic cousin, was some fifteen feet long, was 
swimming in midstream, strongly and well. The 
powerful reptile was crossing the mile-wide river 
on a long angle, going against the stream, and kept 
at a very fair speed. Occasionally the long wave¬ 
like line, glinting metallic and burnished in the 
sunlight, disappeared beneath the surface of the 
water, and only a widening ripple told where it had 
been, but, ten or twenty yards farther, the snake 
emerged again, and swam on, unconcernedly, its 
powerful head held high out of the water. 

“ Quick, Father! ” cried Spencer. 

“ Quick what? ” 


INTO THE JUNGLE 


213 


“ Shoot him! ” 

“ What for, Son? ” 

“ A specimen! ” 

“ Very good! ” agreed The Hunter. “ I’ll promise 
to shoot him, if you’ll promise to dive to the bot¬ 
tom of the Zambesi after him, and run your risk 
of being taken for a quick lunch by a crocodile.” 

“Oh! Wouldn’t the body float?” 

“ No, Son; it would sink like a stone. Snakes are 
very heavy in proportion to their surface area; they 
have to be, since it is the friction of their bodies on 
the ground which enables them to crawl. Not that 
I consider ‘ crawling ’ a very good word to describe 
a motion which may be as fast as an elephant can 
run! I don’t mean the python, particularly, he’s 
rather a slow goer, but the Mamba, for instance. 

“ I’m every bit as anxious as you are, Spencer, 
to get a good specimen of a good-sized python, and 
that fellow, over there, seems to be full-grown. 
But it will have to be shot on land, where we can 
handle the skin. Snake’s skins, too, are especially 
hard to prepare so that the scales don’t fall off.” 

“ Oh, yes, Father; I wanted to ask you about 
that. How are we going to preserve our specimens 
and all that sort of thing? You haven’t brought a 
single thing with you, so far as I know.” 


214 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


“No. I thought I had told you. Dunbar is go¬ 
ing to meet us at a point on the Cape-to-Cairo 
Railway, or, at least, he is going to establish a 
camp at Tbinba’s Kraal should we have passed 
there before he comes. We could have gone by rail 
that way, Spencer, for it’s a great deal shorter, but 
I had to go round by Zanzibar in order to pick up 
Mbumbwe. It’s nearly twenty years since I did 
any actual preparing in the field, and I don’t know 
the modern methods at all. Thanks to that mam¬ 
moth ivory we sold, money is no object to this ex¬ 
pedition, so we got the best man we could find. 
Dunbar is certainly the finest taxidermist in the 
Middle West. He’s a photographic expert, too, and 
is bringing the cameras and chemicals.” 

“ Is he a hunter, too? ” 

“A big-game hunter? No. It doesn’t seem to 
appeal to him, and though he’s very wiry and can 
stand a lot of exposure, he’s a small man and not 
an athlete in any sense of the word. He’ll stay 
in camp, mostly. It’s an exceedingly good thing to 
have one reliable man in charge of a main camp. 

“ Moner, the museum ornithologist, is coming 
with him, but Moner scorns everything that hasn’t 
wings, though he condescends to a certain interest 
in insects. He will make entomological collections, 


INTO THE JUNGLE 


215 


as well. They'll work on their own. For the big 
game, Son, the Museum is depending on you and 
me. But, remember, we're after specimens, not 
slaughter! ” 

Not far from the lower swirl of the Kebrabaza 
Rapids, the flat-bottomed boat came at last to a 
rough wharf, behind which there stretched a fairly 
large but widely scattered native village, with one 
or two traders' stores near the wharf. 

Here, thirty porters and bearers were engaged, as 
well as two “ boys," one for Spencer and one for his 
father. Both were experienced, and had attended 
white hunters before. The camp eo A uipment, re¬ 
duced to strict necessities, was made up into pack¬ 
ages tied tightly with water-proofed canvas—espe¬ 
cially against the morning dews—and, at sunrise the 
next morning, the party set forth. 

Spencer was in a fever of excitement. They were 
off for the jungle! 

On through the village, out beyond the patch of 
cultivated land, to the far edges of the fenced pas¬ 
tures with their hurdled kraals, and thence into the 
wild scrub. Toward noon, the road, wide and easy 
of travel, forked to the right, following the river 
bank, but Mbumbwe turned to the left along a 
native trail, so winding that it was rare to be able 



216 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


to see the path for a dozen feet ahead, and so nar¬ 
row that one could not walk in it at all without 
crossing the feet one over the other. 

“ Is this the jungle? ” queried Spencer, as the 
trees and undergrowth grew thicker. 

“ Almost/’ said his father, “ though it is very far 
from being dense jungle. Wait! Mbumbwe is 
making for an old elephant road, which skirts a bit 
of real jungle. It has been unused by elephants 
these twenty years and more, but there has been 
enough travel along it to keep it open. It is not the 
shortest way, but I shall avoid these native trails 
whenever I can, until my feet get used to them 
again.” 

Spencer rubbed his ankles ruefully. 

“ It’s like ballet dancing, this crossing one foot 
over the other all the time! ” he complained. 

“ Keep your shoe-laces loose, especially at the 
top,” his father advised. “Your feet will swell 
enough, anyway. But you’ll have to get accus¬ 
tomed to these trails, Son; after all, they’re better 
than thorn-scrub. It’s a good thing you’re a sturdy 
walker, for there’ll be few days that we don’t make 
twelve to twenty miles a day, especially if we get 
on elephant spoor.” 

“ I can’t walk like you, Father! ” 


INTO THE JUNGLE 


217 


“ Perhaps not, but, being younger, a night’s sleep 
will recuperate you better than it will me. That 
evens up! I’ve no fear of your quitting, Spencer. 
If you hadn’t shown me, in Siberia, that you’ve got 
good stuff in you, well, you wouldn’t be here, now.” 

“ There’s a difference in temperature, anyway,” 
grinned the boy. 

“ There is; and, in dense jungle, it’s a good deal 
hotter than here.” 

An hour later, the narrow winding trail, scarcely 
wider than the print of a foot, entered the old ele¬ 
phant trail. This had been trodden for ages past, 
and was beaten down to a depth of seven inches 
below the level of the surrounding ground. 

“ This trail will lead us into real jungle, prob¬ 
ably,” The Hunter commented, “ for elephants 
almost invariably come to water to drink, during 
the evening, feed at night, and then find some dense 
shady bush for a ‘ standing place ’ during the day.” 

“ Do elephants sleep standing, as the books say? ” 

Mbumbwe, who was walking directly in front, 
turned and answered the question. 

“ Bull elephants quite almost always standing 
sleep,” he said, “ or leaning ant-hill against. Cow 
elephants, small calves with them, lie down sleep, 
calf lie down sleep, too, between legs of mother ele- 


218 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


phant. Bulls, tuskers, no! I track a herd of bulls, 
one time, more than one moon; not one spoor where 
bull lie down sleep. Very, very old bull lie down 
sleep, sometimes.” 

“ Is that really so, Father? ” queried Spencer. 

“ Quite true, from all that hunters and natural¬ 
ists say. People used to believe, you know, in the 
olden days, that an elephant had no joints in his 
knees and couldn’t lie down. But he not only 
kneels very often, and lies down sometimes, he also 
rolls; eh, Mbumbwe? ” 

“ On sand, beside rivers, elephant rolls. Yes.” 

“Oh, look! ” cried Spencer, breaking off in ad¬ 
miration as the old elephant road plunged into the 
real forest. 

It wound upward in a slow gradient between the 
tall, straight stems of parinaria trees, from which 
hung and twined and twisted dozens of different 
forms of lianas and those cable-like vines which are 
known as “monkey-ropes,” giving the forest the 
appearance of having been taken in hand by some 
monstrous irregular-web-making spider; huge bao¬ 
babs, squat and pale, twenty feet in diameter, stood 
like solitary columns that suggested the ruins of an 
antediluvian temple built by giants; borassus palms 
lifted their ever-moving fronds high above the 


INTO THE JUNGLE 


219 


rigidity of the stunted ironwoods; swaying bam¬ 
boos, sixty feet high, made of their narrow and 
sharp-pointed silver-green leaves an arrowy lace- 
work against the sky; the graceful acacia and ever- 
flowering mimosa gave a grateful shade on the 
edges of the clearings; masses of huge euphorbias 
splashed the middle ground with their striking 
flowers, scarcely less vivid than the flitting crimson 
butterflies and the swooping painted bats. 

“ More strikingly colored, more strangely shaped 
than any of these, seeming, indeed, like lustrous 
moths in their hues and like vampiric insects in 
their unwholesome beauty, orchids of every blazing 
tint and pattern gleamed in the crotches of tree- 
boughs or dropped on invisible threads. They vied 
with the huge iridescent beetles of the tropics, whose 
hard coats flashed back the sunlight like the facets 
of vari-colored jewels, and with the glittering 
dragon-flies, with bodies of ruby and of emerald, 
six inches in length, poised on their ever-quivering 
wings of mother-o’-pearl. 

Yes, this was the jungle! 

A whole orchestra of sounds pervaded this forest. 
Highest of all, perhaps, was the steady hum of 
myriads of insects, from the high-pitched shrill of 
the Uganda gnat to the deep bourdon of the black 


220 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


wild bees. The grating sound of the “ white ants,” 
or termites, resembling the scratching of a file on 
iron, told of the destruction of some piece of fallen 
timber, eaten with a rapidity that nothing—not 
even fire—could surpass. The red-tailed grey par¬ 
rots whistled squawkily from the nearest water, not 
with the harsh and violent chorus of dawn, but with 
more confidential chuckles. From the same direc¬ 
tion came the raucous note of the fishing eagle, 
watching from his eyrie to pounce upon some 
frightened fish which was leaping from the water to 
escape the pursuit of a hungry crocodile. The 
“ tcha-tchaa ” of the tick-birds told that a rhinoc¬ 
eros was not very far away, and the snowy egrets 
sailed away over a tiny clearing wherein was a 
muddy pool, with a clear high note as musical as 
their forms were graceful. Over all, rose the con¬ 
tinuous cooing of the woodland doves. 

This was the music of the jungle! 

Nor were there lacking deeper sounds, though, in 
the daytime, most of the loud-voiced hunters are 
asleep. A hippopotamus bellow—which will carry 
for a mile or more—was evidence that the Zam¬ 
besi was not far away. The little Samango mon¬ 
keys chattered ceaselessly—no gossips ever have so 
much to say—and, by their very numbers, gave 




INTO THE JUNGLE 


221 


sonority to their tumult. The porcupine rattled his 
quills, but hurried into cover suddenly when he 
heard the shrill bird-like chirp of a forest ichneumon 
or African mongoose. From the lower grass-valley 
came the lowing of the Cape buffalo. On all sides 
came the punctuation of the grunts of the wart- 
hog, that most hideous of wild swine, whose tough 
hide and foot-long tushes make him an awkward 
customer for almost any carnivore to tackle, though 
the python finds a young wart-hog a toothsome 
meal. 

This was the undertone of the jungle. 

Suddenly—all things happen suddenly in the 
jungle—a venomous yapping was heard in the dis¬ 
tance, coming nearer rapidly. 

“ Hunting-dogs! ” cried Mbumbwe. 

Spencer reached for his rifle, which was being 
carried by his “ boy ” since they were not hunting, 
only travelling, but, before the weapon reached his 
hands, a magnificent sable antelope, the size of a 
roe deer, with superb twisted and ringed horns, 
dashed across the trail. The superb animal was 
closely pursued by eleven ugly creatures, the size of 
a mastiff, large-eared, irregularly spotted white, yel¬ 
low and black, leaping noisily. 

The boy fired, barely having time to get the piece 


222 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


to his shoulder, but his aim was true, and one of 
the dogs rolled over, mortally wounded. Without 
a second’s hesitation, two of its companions stopped, 
so suddenly that they almost went head over heels, 
and with savage growls tore their still living com¬ 
rade to pieces. Such ferocity the boy had never 
seen. 

The other eight African hunting-dogs went on, 
unchecked, after their quarry. 

“ How far before they catch him, Mbumbwe? ” 
questioned The Hunter. 

“Half an hour walk, one hour, not more! ” the 
guide answered. “ Sable very tired, I see nostrils 
flat.” 

Spencer gaped at this precision. He had barely 
seen the antelope for the fraction of a second, yet 
the Matabele’s trained eye had noticed this minute 
detail. 

“ Follow up, Mbumbwe, the porters can wait, 
here. The skin will be worth nothing after the 
dogs have got him down, but the sable had a fine 
pair of horns.” 

The tracker’s sense of distance was exact. In 
about forty minutes they came to the scene of the 
tragedy. Two of the dogs were dead, killed by the 
sable’s powerful twisted horns; two were so 


INTO THE JUNGLE 


223 


wounded that they would serve as a meal for their 
fellows, later; yet they, with their four unscathed 
comrades, were tearing the magnificent antelope to 
pieces. The creature was half devoured, already. 

The dogs snarled and showed no sign of willing¬ 
ness to abandon their prey, as the hunters ap¬ 
proached. Using their lighter rifles, Spencer, his 
father, and Mbumbwe fired. Two dogs fell dead 
and the two others, followed by their wounded com¬ 
panions, leaped away into the bushes. 

“ Poor old chap,” apostrophized Hunter Wolland, 
as he came forward and stood by the half-devoured 
but still warm remains of what had been one of the 
finest animals of the African wild, less than an hour 
before, “ you’d have had a better chance even 
against a lion, wouldn’t you? ” 

“ Are the hunting-dogs so deadly, then, Father? ” 
“ All hunting creatures are deadly. Here, in the 
forest, there is nothing but hunters and hunted. 
Death lurks at the shoulder of every living wild 
creature from its birth, and Life is nothing but a 
continual series of terrors and escapes.” 

Yes; this was the life of the jungle. 


CHAPTER XII 


AMIDST A HERD 

Dunbar and Moner not yet having arrived with 
the special supplies for the Museum Expedition, 
Hunter Wolland left word at Tbinba’s Kraal that 
they should establish camp, there, as soon as they 
came, and that he would return, with Spencer, in 
a month’s time. He was exceedingly anxious to 
strike across the corner of Northeastern Rhodesia, 
for Mbumbwe had heard from a native who had 
accompanied a Dutch ivory-hunter, some little 
time before, that several herds of wild elephants 
were roaming the broken mountain country near 
the border. 

This section of Rhodesia is little visited by 
hunters, for it is necessary to cross two tsetse belts 
to reach it, and, in one of these, sleeping-sickness is 
known to exist, as well as “ nagana ” or tsetse fly 
disease. In consequence of this barrier, so the in¬ 
formation stated, the elephants had not been 
hunted and were less timid there. It would be 
easier for Hunter Wolland and Spencer to observe 

the habits of an elephant herd in such a region than 

224 


AMIDST A HERD 


225 


in those parts where elephants have become shy 
and timorous from constant hunting, and where the 
herds are smaller. 

During the two weeks of rigorous and constant 
marching which were required to take the party 
into these almost unexplored wilds, Spencer had 
begun to learn how to handle himself in the jungle. 
Rather to his father’s disappointment, the boy was 
not naturally endowed with the qualities necessary 
to make a good big-game shot. He was too anxious 
to take exact aim, and, as both Mbumbwe and his 
father reminded him, hunting aim—while neces¬ 
sarily accurate—must become instinctive rather 
than deliberate. 

“ Jungle shooting,” explained his father, “ must 
become a natural reflex. Suppose an elephant is 
charging you, a hesitation of two or three seconds 
may make the difference between your death or 
that of the elephant. Not only that, but it is es¬ 
sential to good shooting that will, hand, and eye 
should act simultaneously. That will come, in 
time, I hope, but until it does, Son, don’t run the 
risk of wounding any animal capable of attacking 
you in return, if wounded! ” 

“I did shoot the koodoo! ” declared Spencer, in 
justification. 



226 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


“ You did, without a doubt, and a pretty shot it 
was; I couldn’t have bettered it, myself. You were 
in luck, too, for it’s not every hunter in Africa who 
can boast of a koodoo trophy. Then, since I know 
that the Detroit Museum already has a fine speci¬ 
men, the Trustees may be willing to let you keep 
the skin and the horns for yourself. But, Spencer, 
if you hit the koodoo, you missed the Zambesi 
leopard, entirely! ” 

To this remembrance, the boy made no reply. It 
was rather a sore point with him. He had missed 
the leopard exactly for the reason that his father 
criticized—hanging a little too long on his aim. 

It was just at the end of this two weeks of march¬ 
ing that there came what was, to the boy, a never- 
to-be-forgotten day. This was the day on which 
he saw a wild elephant spoor, or track, for the first 
time. 

The ground was not very soft, yet the imprint 
was deep enough. Almost round, with only slight 
indentations to show the five stumpy toes, the spoor 
was a few inches over a foot in diameter. Carefully 
measured with a tape-line, it was four feet three 
inches in circumference. 

“Whew!” whistled Spencer. “He must be as 
big as a house! ” 



A MASSIVE BULL ELEPHANT. 
Shot in Northeastern Rhodesia, 




Crosses show correct spots for the brain, heart, 

and lungs. 



Courtesy of Heath Cranton, Ltd. 

A BULL ELEPHANT’S SPOOR. 
Scale, one-sixth actual size. 












AMIDST A HERD 227 

“ Not very big, not big,” said Mbumbwe. “ Much 
bigger I have seen.” 

“ What’s the biggest spoor you ever saw? ” 

“ Fifty-eight inches,” replied the tracker. 

“ That beats my record,” commented The 
Hunter; “ fifty-six and one-half inches is my best.” 

“ And you say, Father, that twice the circum¬ 
ference of the spoor gives the height of the ani¬ 
mal? ” 

“ That’s the hunter’s rule. It’s not always exact 
to a few inches, for it may happen, sometimes, that 
a very bulky elephant which may not be especially 
tall at the shoulder shows a large spoor. But, 
within very narrow limits, this measurement is 
pretty sound.” 

“ Then this chap is more than eight feet high! ” 

“ He is sure to be that, and more. Eight feet is 
not high for an African bull elephant. I should 
rather doubt if he were full-grown, just because of 
that spoor. Plenty of elephant bulls run between 
ten feet and eleven feet. A beast running over 
twelve feet or even reaching twelve feet would be 
unusual. 

“ After all, Son, the size of any animal race is 
largely a matter of averages, just as it is with 
human beings. A man between five feet ten inches 


228 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


and six feet is a normally tall man. There are, 
occasionally, men who reach a few inches more, but 
they are rare. You wouldn’t be justified in taking 
their measurements as showing the tallness of the 
human race. An African bull elephant, standing 
ten feet at the shoulder, would be representative, 
one of eleven feet would be tall. Anything over 
eleven feet six inches might be considered abnor¬ 
mally tall.” 

“ Well, that’s big enough, in all conscience! You 
never see them that size in Zoological Gardens! ” 

“ No, for the very good reason that you never see 
a full-grown African bull elephant there! How 
would you get him there? And how would you 
keep him, after he was there? The African ele¬ 
phant does not submit to handling.” 

“ Wasn’t Jumbo an African elephant? ” 

“He was, but he was brought up in captivity 
from calfhood, and his docility was a rare exception. 
Even that didn’t keep him from charging an express 
train. The shock killed Jumbo, you remember, but 
it crumpled up the locomotive, too. The elephants 
you see in circuses, without exception, are from 
Indian or Ceylonese domesticated herds.” 

“And any African bull elephant is normally as 
big as Jumbo! ” 


AMIDST A HERD 


229 


“ At least. You see, Spencer, an elephant takes 
plenty of time to grow. He isn’t grown up until he 
reaches forty or fifty years, and then he is apt to 
live on for a hundred years or so, more.” 

“ You mean that elephants live to be a hundred 
and fifty years old! ” 

“ The average is probably higher. Of course, 
there are fabled stories of animals which have lived 
twice as long. That is possible. There are rare 
cases of longevity, just as there are rare examples 
of extreme size. But I should be inclined to think 
that two hundred years was the limit to the life of 
a wild elephant, corresponding, say, to ninety years 
of age in the life of Man. This elephant, whose 
spoor we are looking at, is probably a mere young¬ 
ster of thirty years old or thereabouts.” 

“ Are we going to follow up this spoor, Father? ” 

Mbumbwe, who had been following the conver¬ 
sation with great interest, tapping the ground with 
his long-handled axe from time to time in token of 
approval, undertook to answer: 

“ Too small. Young elephant. Herd not very 
far off. Boss say, ‘ Find baby calf, first/ ” 

As usual, the Matabele had judged the district 
accurately. 

A couple of miles farther on, they reached a re- 


230 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


gion where all the evidence showed that a herd of 
elephants had passed. The path of their passage 
was strewn with saplings trodden down, with young 
trees broken off short and a litter of boughs and 
branches. Much of the ground was ploughed up, 
and the undergrowth was trodden flat. Some fair¬ 
sized trees, especially the Mauni-trees and the 
Masuko-trees—the fruits of which are greatly 
esteemed by elephants—measuring as much as 
twenty-two inches in circumference, were broken off 
at a height of a little less than four feet from the 
ground. 

Everywhere was elephant spoor, and, among the 
tracks, were the imprints of numerous little calves. 

“ Cow herd. Find them soon,” said the tracker, 
observing the recency of the droppings. “ Take 
guns.” 

But The Hunter held him back. 

“ No, Mbumbwe,” he said. “ I want to watch 
the herd, to-night. The ivory can wait. Get down 
wind. A few hours’ sleep will do none of us any 
harm.” 

The sun sank slowly. Spencer woke toward 
evening. 

With the coming of dusk a new spirit thrilled 
through the forest. Most of the greater beasts of 


AMIDST A HERD 


231 


the African jungle are nocturnal, and the wilder 
part of the life of the jungle is always its night life. 
It is in the dark that most of the timid creatures 
venture out to feed and to drink; it is then that 
the great carnivores hunt for their food. The grim 
battle of tooth and claw begins with nightfall. 

The first living evidence of the oncoming of 
Night was the sudden rush of the African Spectre 
Bats and the False Vampires. These large naked¬ 
winged creatures of baneful presage and hideous 
appearance are universally detested by all beasts 
of the wild, but by none so much as by elephants. 
A large swarm of bats will stampede a herd, for 
the wild elephant hates a bat as much as the tame 
elephant does a mouse. The reason for this repug¬ 
nance is unknown. 

The next sure sign of coming night was the first 
cry of that haunting chorus from which no part of 
the African jungle is ever free: the “ Mbwee, 
mbwee ” of the jackals, ever hungry, ever despised, 
slinking through every alternate patch of shade and 
light to snatch a meal—either of carrion or of flesh 
—to stay the demands of a stomach which cries 
famine within an hour after complete repletion. 
The digestion of a jackal is one of the wonders of 
Nature—but it is not an agreeable one. 



232 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


One such jackal, reddish-brown in the fading 
light but with the lateral black and white stripes on 
his lean and sinewy flanks showing up clearly, gal¬ 
loped lazily past the hunters. He smelt the pres¬ 
ence of Man, but, though he is the most cowardly 
creature that breathes, he has not the same fear of 
Man as have the lordlier animals. No one—not 
even the natives—desires a jackal’s hide or a 
jackal’s meat. 

Spencer • noticed that this particular animal ran 
limpingly and he judged that the wounds were re¬ 
cent. In this the boy had judged correctly, for, 
that very afternoon, the jackal had ventured into a 
zebra herd, in the hope of snatching a new-born 
foal. This was a daring venture for him, a sign of 
hunger, for he had found no carrion the night be¬ 
fore and his only meal had been a mouthful or two 
of small monkey which he had snatched from the 
talons of a night-owl. But the zebras have little 
fear of a jackal, and the stallion leader of the herd 
had driven him away with a well-placed kick. 

As he trotted past the hunters, his plaintive 
“ Mbwee, mbwee ” cried aloud his hunger, as he 
vanished into the growing darkness. 

Half an hour later, the hunters were on the move. 

There was a young moon, but the sky was covered 


AMIDST A HERD 


233 


with a thin film of high cirrus-cloud which rendered 
the moonlight diffused and ghostly. This greenish- 
silver gleam threw up in the strangest fashion the 
drooping orchilla lichen—which resembles distantly 
the Spanish moss of the southern United States— 
and made the twining and snake-like lianas seem 
like writhing coils of horrendous serpents. Where 
tree-growth cut off the light, deep shadows and 
sombre patches of darkness suggested, to Spencer, 
the hiding-places of mysterious dangers. In those 
shadows lurked the lion and the Zambesi leopard, 
either one of which could tear him to pieces in a 
moment. Under those bushes lay coiled, or crept, 
pythons, boas, and other serpents, to say nothing 
of the venomous puff-adder and the cobra. As for 
the teeming insect life, well—it was preferable not 
to think about it. 

The boy did his best not to be afraid, for both 
his father and Mbumbwe had told him that the 
larger animals of the forest fear nothing, except 
Man, and that Man need have no fear, at all, in 
the jungle. Not a single wild animal, of any sort 
whatsoever, will ever voluntarily attack Man. All 
will flee at the hated man-smell, and the elephant 
quickest of them all. Man-eating lions and man¬ 
killing rogue elephants—both very rare exceptions 


234 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


—are found only on the fringes of civilization, 
where game is scarce and where cultivated crops 
are tempting; in the jungle, they keep to their nor¬ 
mal habits and their normal food. 

Presently, as they crept forward, Spencer heard 
a curious rumbling, gurgling sound, something like 
water being poured out of a narrow-necked bottle. 
It carried a long distance. Almost at the same time 
he heard a cracking and splintering of branches. 

Mbumbwe stole forward, softly, alone, testing the 
direction of the faint breeze with the down from 
owl-feathers, which he kept in a small bag, after 
the fashion of the Makorikori tribal hunters. Un¬ 
der his leading, the hunters approached, up wind, 
to a forest glade. 

The silver light gleamed calmly upon this glade, 
and, as he looked, with a suddenness that was 
almost spectral, a huge elephant cow drifted into 
Spencer’s sight. The word “ drifted ” is exact. It 
came, it became visible, it disappeared, melting into 
the shadows. Astounding as it may seem, nothing 
in the bush is more difficult to see than an elephant. 
Another came, and yet another and another. 

Spencer felt a light friendly touch on his shoul¬ 
der. 

Mbumbwe was already climbing, and his father 



An African elephant pushing through the jungle 






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AMIDST A HERD 


235 


pointed to a large tree—one too big for an elephant 
to push down or uproot, should any of the herd be 
hostile. 

With the sound of his climbing covered by the 
noise of snapping branches, Spencer went upward 
nimbly. He felt as though he were running away, 
and, foolishly, would have liked to stand his ground. 
He had sense enough to know, however, that what 
his father and Mbumbwe thought wise must be 
good enough for him. 

The rumblings now sounded below him, and on 
all sides, up wind. They were the formidable 
gurglings of the stomach and intestines, charac¬ 
teristic of the elephant, sometimes a very useful 
sign to the hunter, as enabling him to locate an 
animals presence in bush so thick that the huge 
bulk cannot be seen. 

More elephants came, or, more exactly, seemed 
to materialize. They made plenty of noise, but 
they were extraordinarily invisible. Dark, dim, 
ponderous, moving shadows magnified by the dif¬ 
fused moonlight, they fed along the glade. Many 

of them prodded up the ground with their left 

» 

tusks—always the left—to get roots and bulbs; 
others shook small trees to get at the bitter-sweet 
greenish matonga fruit with its large seeds em- 


236 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


bedded in the pulp, or gathered the brown-gold 
mbura, of date-like flavor, which lay beneath mag¬ 
nificently branching trees. The tamarinds and the 
acid quaj as attracted others, but the bulk of the 
feeding was on the tips of young trees or the young 
shoots at the ends of branches, to secure which 
whole trees were uprooted ruthlessly and big 
branches torn away with a single pull of a mighty 
trunk. There were about seventy of the animals, 
all of them cows with calves. There was not one 
bull in the herd. 

The humming call-note of the cow elephants— 
one of the three noises which is made by blowing 
through the trunk and is not to be confounded 
with the screams and roars from the throat—bid¬ 
ding the calves keep well to heel, reached Spencer’s 
ears, though he was not wise enough in elephant 
lore to know its meaning. Yet it is all-important. 
Foolish is the calf who wanders a little distance 
from the herd, especially at night; the lions and 
the leopards are on the watch! At each humming 
call, the little ones snuggled close to their mother. 

The boy sat there, bewitched, fascinated. The 
sight of the elephants, by moonlight, so near that 
he could have thrown a stone into their midst was 
extraordinary, magical! 


AMIDST A HERD 


237 


The elephants roamed carelessly, recking no 
harm, for the full-grown elephant, whether bull or 
cow, has no jungle foe to fear. But the leader of 
the herd, an experienced cow long beyond the years 
of calving, a leader who knew the jungle and all its 
ways, chancing to come to windward, caught a sus¬ 
picious whiff. Up went the trunk, instantly, for a 
determining sniff. Yes, it was the dreaded man- 
smell! 

A single trumpet-blast was enough. With a 
celerity that seemed amazing, the shadows disap¬ 
peared. There was a pounding on the ground, a 
sound of crashing undergrowth. The elephants 
were gone. 

In the near distance, a leopard, crouching on a 
tree-branch over a game-trail, waiting for some 
juicy morsel to pass below, coughed. Some inti¬ 
mate jungle-sense told him that the elephants were 
running; ten seconds later, he was but a sulphur- 
colored patch in the brush, making away in long 
bounds. The signal had been given by the elephant 
herd-leader and all the wild knew it. Every 
creature was on the alert. 

Mbumbwe, himself almost a child of the jungle, 
was at once aware of the change. He knew that 
there is never a need for any animal to be warned 


238 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

twice. This was evidenced by the fact that he 
spoke, calmly, in his natural voice, not in a whisper. 

“ Elephants walk till daylight, now! ” he said, 
and clambered down the tree. 

An hour’s walk took them to the camp, and, five 
minutes later, Spencer was fast asleep, dreaming of 
elephants a mile high. 

At sunrise, they set off on the spoor. Having 
winded Man, the leader of the elephant herd had 
travelled most of the night at a swinging gait. Hav¬ 
ing been little hunted, the elephants evidently were 
not very greatly alarmed, since they had fed as they 
went along, but they had not stopped to feed. 

Following the spoor was tough going. The line 
that the elephants had taken was intersected by 
small brooks. These were easily fordable, but in 
each brook and for a considerable distance on either 
side of it, were belts of “ mataiti ” reed. This plant 
is almost—if not quite—as bad as the “ wait-a-bit ” 
thorn. The point of every blade is as sharp as a 
stout needle; it is exceedingly dangerous to the 
face and eyes, since it grows to just about a man’s 
height, and it is cruel to the bare arms of the 
bearers. 

Spencer would have liked to put his hands in his 
pockets and to give his gun to his “boy” 



239 


AMIDST A HERD 

Ak’dibomba, to carry, but that was against hunting 
rules. Each man must carry his rifle when following 
up a spoor. Elephants are afraid of Man, it is true, 
but a hunter does well, also, to be on his guard 
against wild elephants. Without a rifle, a man is 
as helpless as a rabbit. 

The day was terrifically hot, and, in the dense 
jungle, there was not a breath of air stirring. Spen¬ 
cer felt like giving up, a dozen times, that morn¬ 
ing. They had passed some burnt country, and he 
was as black as his own “ boy ”; his eyes, ears, and 
nose were full of charcoal dust. His clothes stuck 
to his back and his feet were chafed and sore. The 
flies were deadly and he was so tired as to lack the 
energy to brush them away. Besides which, he had 
a touch of fever and a blinding headache. Track¬ 
ing elephant in the African tropics is not child’s 
play. 

Had the boy been alone with his father, he would 
have begged for an hour’s rest, but Mbumbwe, 
Ak’dibombo and Kamshengi, The Hunter’s “ boy,” 
trudged on, each carrying an extra rifle, and showed 
no signs of fatigue. The Hunter kept to the steady 
grinding gait, as well. Though fagged and nearly 
dropping, the boy did not want to show the white 
feather, and he dragged himself on, though his rifle 


240 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


seemed to weigh about a ton, though black spots 
were dancing before his eyes, and his arms and 
legs were trembling as though with ague. This was 
hunting speed, was it? The boy could not have hit 
a house-cat at a distance of five yards. 

The noon halt was called at last. Spencer flopped 
to the ground, and lay motionless. He was done 
out, but he kept the knowledge to himself grimly. 
He thought no one had observed it, and he did not 
know that the noon halt had been called by his 
father a good half-hour before the time. Mbumbwe 
knew it, too, and understood. By common consent, 
all agreed to seem not to have seen the boy’s dis¬ 
tress, so plucky had been his endurance. 

Hot, sweet tea, jorums of it, gave him a swift 
pick-me-up. Thanks to his youth, appetite tri¬ 
umphed over fatigue and he made a good meal of 
impala antelope steak. A good wash, a bath for 
the feet, and fresh socks—every wise hunter takes 
this precaution—freshened him wonderfully. 

When Mbumbwe gave the word to take the trail 
again, he got up obediently. There was a crick in 
his back and all his joints seemed stuck together 
with glue, but he said never a word. Fortunately, 
they had not far to go. 

Less than an hour later, the hunters came out of 



AMIDST A HERD 


241 


the forest to the edge of a “ dambo ” or nearly 
circular plain, some fifteen or twenty acres in ex¬ 
tent, covered with grass about three feet high. On 
the further side of this was a dense green patch: 
large trees looming above a wilderness of thorn. 
The grassy level sloped down easily to a small river, 
its presence revealed by a high growth of reeds. 

“ Elephants in there,” said Mbumbwe. “ Can 
get a shot, soon.” 

“ Look to your rifle, Spencer! ” warned his father. 
“ But, whatever you do, don’t fire unless I tell you. 
On, Mbumbwe! ” 

They drew near to the elephant herd. 


CHAPTER XIII 


A RHINOCEROS FIGHT * 

In order to stalk the elephants without disturb¬ 
ing and stampeding the herd, Mbumbwe, using his 
owl-feather down, tested the wind, and found that, 
in order to approach the patch of green vegetation, 
up wind, it would be necessary to make a detour 
around one-third of the circumference of the 
dambo. This brought another side of the clump of 
trees into view, and gave Spencer a most unex¬ 
pected sight. 

Some thirty or forty yards from the timber a 
young elephant calf was romping about, gaily but 
clumsily—his mother, probably, being asleep. 
Calves between one and two years old are apt to 
roam by daytime, for they learn to take green food 
for some months before being weaned. Like chil¬ 
dren, they are hungry all the time, and need a snack 
every now and then. Besides, their sense of smell 
and their experience are not sufficiently developed 
for them to be able to distinguish between whole¬ 
some and unwholesome foliage on a dark night. 

There are many trees in the jungle which a wise 

242 


A RHINOCEROS FIGHT 


243 


elephant leaves strictly alone, and the ground 
plants are still more dangerous. Euphorbias, for 
example, will give any baby elephant a nasty 
stomach-ache. 

This calf elephant, however, was more adven¬ 
turous than he should have been; he was more than 
that, he was disobedient, and disobedience, in the 
jungle, usually brings its own penalty, for the rules 
have been made on the strict basis of life and death. 
There was no need for the little fellow to have come 
a-wandering, food was plentiful inside the clump of 
trees, where he would have been in safety under 
the protection of the herd. 

“ Good calf!” whispered Mbumbwe. “You 
want?” 

“ Perhaps,” answered The Hunter, in the same 
low tone, “ but I had wanted a smaller one. 
Still-” 

He was about to put rifle to shoulder when a 
sudden movement in the reeds beside the river, far 
to the left of him, bade him look around. A hunter 
needs eyes on every side of his head. 

The reeds parted. 

A large “ white ” square-mouthed rhinoceros, 
two-horned and menacing, came trotting out with 
an air of annoyed hurry that was quite unusual. 



244 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


The rhinoceros does not feed as he goes, like the 
elephant. He has his special feeding-grounds, well 
known to his preference—he is very fond of young 
thorns—and he reserves his appetite until he is 
quite ready to make a good feed. 

In all probability, his dinner-table was that 

9 

thorny scrub in that well-shaded clump where the 
elephants were. That meant little to him. For 
elephants, the rhinoceros had neither love nor dis¬ 
like; he did not foregather with them, but neither 
did he go out of his way to avoid them. On the 
contrary, the elephants would be more likely to 
move away. They disliked, intensely, the atten¬ 
tions of the tick-birds or Red-beaked Rhinoceros 
Birds, which invariably are seen perched on the 
back of a rhinoceros and which feed on the parasites 
which inhabit the thick skin of the beast, an atten¬ 
tion for which the rhinoceros is grateful. 

The elephant calf, in all probability, had never 
seen a square-mouthed rhinoceros before, and he 
did not understand this formidable beast, not so 
very much smaller than a half-grown elephant and, 
in its way, every bit as powerful. If a wart-hog 
boar is perhaps the most hideous animal in the 
African jungle, the “ white ” or square-mouthed 
rhinoceros certainly bears off the palm for ferocious 



A RHINOCEROS FIGHT 245 

appearance. It was little wonder that the elephant 
calf was scared. 

Certainly, he was frightened, for he trumpeted 
for his mother in a whining little pipe. Even from 
where the hunters lay, crouching, it could be heard 
distinctly, and its note told that the little fellow 
was alarmed. 

With a hoarse roar—one of the throat cries—the 
mother elephant dashed from the clump of trees. 
She had been asleep—as much so as an elephant 
ever is—but she had heard the calf’s shrill pipe. 
And, as she emerged from the forest, she saw the 
huge rhinoceros trotting in a straight line direct for 
her little one. 

Now, a rhino will pay no more attention to an 
elephant calf than he will to any other beast. He 
is a rigid vegetarian, very much accustomed to mind 
his own business and very well able to see to it 
that no one interferes w T ith it. But the cow ele¬ 
phant, just awakened and troubled by her calf’s 
cry of peril, was standing there, on the edge of the 
dambo, angrily lifting one forefoot after the other, 
swaying her head and tossing her trunk crossly. 
The rhinoceros, despite his small brain, shared with 
all other beasts of the wild the telepathic power of 
recognizing hostility. 


246 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

To add to all this, the rhino, himself, was in aii 
exasperated state. Once in his life he had been 
shot at and wounded, and, just a few minutes be¬ 
fore Spencer and his father saw him coming out 
of the fringe of reeds, a falling branch had struck 
ground near him with a sudden crack that resem¬ 
bled the crack of the rifle he had heard, ten years 
before. He was excited and restless, as was shown 
by his darting here and there, as he ran, after the 
fashion of his breed, when alarmed. 

The rhino’s suspicion, in the same psychological 
way, communicated itself to the cow elephant, 
though she had no knowledge of the cause, and this 
added to her irritation. Though there was no rea¬ 
son for any of this hostility, the situation was tense 
with mutual distrust and anxiety. 

On this grassy ground, what was more, the white 
rhinoceros was absolutely sure of himself. Stand¬ 
ing fully six feet in height and eleven feet in length 
(this species has never been seen in captivity) 
weighing a couple of tons and more, with a dis¬ 
proportionately large and powerful head armed 
with sharp and stocky upcurving horns of which the 
front one reaches nearly two feet in length, the 
square-mouthed rhinoceros is a match for any 
creature living. 


A RHINOCEROS FIGHT 247 

This one, a fair specimen of his kind, feared noth¬ 
ing on earth except the smell of the white man. 
Natives, he ignored. As he was trotting forward, 
in this state of exasperation, suddenly something 
struck him with added annoyance, probably a whiff 
of the hunters, for he stopped, whirled round with 
an agility that seemed scarcely possible for a crea¬ 
ture of his bulk and looked straight at Spencer and 
his father with his low-set pig-like eyes. A rhino’s 
sight, however, is as poor as his scent and hearing 
are keen, and even if the hunters had not been 
hidden it is doubtful if he would have seen them. 
But his sense of smell could not play him false, and 
he had no doubt that something very threatening 
was toward. 

At this most inopportune moment, the little calf 
squealed again. This time, the little fellow had 
ample cause, for the mother had given him a sharp 
slap with her trunk as punishment for his disobedi¬ 
ence in wandering away; elephant training is strict, 
and a trunk forms a most effective “ slipper.” 

The rhino wheeled again at the squeal. No, this 
was too much! Too many annoying things were 
happening in this dambo. He would get out of 
there; he would go where there were peace and 
quietness, at least, and where a rhino might eat his 


248 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


lunch, undisturbed. He set off again, but the 
change of direction which had been caused by his 
momentary wheeling to face the hunters led him 
straight in the direction of the cow elephant and 
her calf. 

The elephant paid absolutely no attention to the 
huge beast which was rapidly nearing her, but she 
gave the calf another slap. 

Why should she heed the rhinoceros? He was 
nothing to her, nor she to him. She had seen hun¬ 
dreds of rhinos in her life, but they had ignored 
her, as she had disregarded them. There was no 
reason to suppose that this one would behave any 
differently from the others. 

The rhinoceros, with an occasional angry snort, 
trotted across the grass at a ponderous run. 

What particular streak of ill-temper was it that 
decided him to be vicious? He did not know, him¬ 
self. It was a case of nerves. 

With a little squeal of ferocity, he charged 
straight for the towering bulk of the big cow ele¬ 
phant. To his small brain, she seemed to be 
barring his way. The elephant had scarcely time to 
turn, in order to escape a slashing rip from the 
formidable anterior horn of the rhino, for a rhinoc¬ 
eros can deliver a blow little less deadly than that 


A RHINOCEROS FIGHT 


249 


of the elephant, and the slashing fashion of it deals 
an ugly wound, worse than that of an elephant’s 
tusk. 

“ That was the moment,” writes A. Herbert, de¬ 
scribing a similar combat, “ when a wise elephant 
would have spirited herself away, but this mistaken 
female considered her prestige at stake, and resolved 
on battle. 

“ The rhinoceros pulled up and stood still, try¬ 
ing to get the wind of other possible adversaries— 
the rest of the elephant herd was out of sight 
among the closely growing shrub—and peered about 
him cunningly with his low-set eyes. 

“ He looked what he was—invulnerable! 

“ Seen square on, the hinder horn, so much 
smaller than the front one, was not visible, but the 
powerful front horn, standing up twenty inches 
from his armored nose, looked vindictive. The ter¬ 
rific thickness of the skull bones of the rhino, and 
the smallness of his brain cavity, made him as im¬ 
pervious to frontal attack as the elephant herself.” 


“ Is he going to charge again? ” whispered Spen¬ 
cer to his father. 

“ No, not likely. He’ll go on about his business.” 

In most cases, The Hunter would have been in 
the right in such a judgment, for the rhinoceros is 
an animal that is interested only in his own af¬ 
fairs. But the cow elephant, as Herbert has told 
- in one of her many fine pieces of jungle writing, 


250 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

deemed herself mortally offended by the rhinoceros’ 
attack. Trumpeting, and raising her trunk aloft, to 
keep it out of danger—always an elephant’s chief 
concern—she rushed at the enemy. 

“ On the first impact,” writes this eye-witness, 
“ the greater weight of the cow elephant bore the 
rhinoceros down and carried him forward in a pro¬ 
testing slide. Her tusks, sharp and powerful as 
they were, could not pierce that armor-plated shoul¬ 
der, and, as her impetuous charge carried her for¬ 
ward, the angry rhinoceros detached himself, and, 
recovering his feet with a nimble agility, wheeled 
and made a sideway feint which gave him an in¬ 
stant advantage. 

“ His thick sharp horn got her between the ribs, 
and, in a titanic struggle for supremacy, the war¬ 
riors went down. Sometimes the elephant had the 
advantage, but, more often than not, the laurels 
lay with the smaller and wilier animal.” 

The rhinoceros had a terrific advantage over his 
foe. His own vitals were fully protected by his 
battleship-armor back, and it was next to impos¬ 
sible for the elephant’s tusks to pierce that, while 
her own vital parts were just within easy reach of 
her enemy’s formidable up-raking horn. 

Despite the deep and jagged wound in her ribs, 
the elephant got to her feet, gave a stride and 
kicked forward. The powerful blow caught the 
rhinoceros fair. It would have punched a hole in a 


A RHINOCEROS FIGHT 251 

steel plate. The huge grey beast went rolling, and, 
her tusks gleaming, the cow elephant turned her 
head sidewise and lunged down. 

Had the tusks struck absolutely fair and true, 
they might have gored, even through the rhinoc¬ 
eros’ hide, but, though the rhino had been sent 
spinning and several of his ribs crushed in, his blood 
was up and he was not one to care for the blow 
even of an elephant’s foot. Any fight, in the jungle, 
is a fight to the death. 

There is nothing slow about a rhino when he 
chooses to move, and, in the second which elapsed 
between the kick and the tusk-thrust, the rhinoc¬ 
eros was already rolling clear. The gleaming tusks 
slipped on his moving body. Had the nearest tusk 
been but a foot or two farther forward, it might 
have found the vulnerable point near the shoulder 
and the rhinoceros would never have moved again. 

Sure, absolutely sure that she had pinned her 
enemy to the ground, the cow elephant stayed 
stock-still, her tusks deep in the earth, then she 
drew them out and stood there, a second, down- 
stooped, before kneeling on what she supposed to 
be her prostrate foe, in order to squash him to 
death. 

She had misjudged, miscalculated! 


252 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


The rhinoceros was not pinned down by those 
tusks. Though wounded and battered, he was on 
his feet, so filled with fury that he was unconscious 
of pain. 

Backing up a yard or two, he charged again with 
all his tremendous force, two tons of muscle behind 
a battering ram. 

The two horns caught the elephant under the 
shoulder, but the wounds did not reach the vitals. 

They proved just as dangerous. 

The elephant, already off her balance by her 
stooping position from the tusk-thrust, was felled 
to the ground by the rhinoceros’ maddened charge, 
and lay for an instant on her side. 

Before she could move, before she had a chance 
to rise, the furious rhino battered her with con¬ 
tinuous blows of his mighty two-horned head, blows 
as tremendous as the elephant’s own. 

An elephant cannot leap to the ground with all 
four feet, but must rise slowly; each time she 
heaved herself to her knees, the rhino crashed her 
down again. The short, sharp horn gored in a dozen 
times at least. There was not an instant’s pause in 
the savage attack; that unwieldy head swept sickle- 
wise or lunged forward with a frenzied quickness 
and power that were irresistible. 



Courtesy of Hutchinson & Co. Drawn by Winifred Austin. 

A RHINOCEROS ATTACKING AN ELEPHANT. 




Square-mouthed rhinoceros in shallow stream. 






A RHINOCEROS FIGHT 253 

< 

Once, indeed, trying to rise, the elephant heaved 
herself full to her knees. In a second she would 
have been up. But, in so doing, she exposed her 
throat, and the rhinoceros plunged in under the 
gleaming tusks and ripped all the arteries away. 
The blood spurted out in tremendous jets. 

The cow elephant bellowed frantically, but it was 
her last effort. Death came instantly after. 

For fully two minutes the rhino pounded the 
body, until, having satisfied himself that his enemy 
was dead, he set off again, running in the jerky 
lines and short curves that a rhinoceros foolishly 
adopts when trying to evade pursuit. 

The cow’s death bellow had been heard! 

A minute later, the leader of the herd dashed out 
to the rescue. 

One look at her dead comrade told her what had 
happened, and the sight of the disappearing rhinoc¬ 
eros explained the rest. She ran a few strides for¬ 
ward, planning revenge, and then halted. After 
all, the cow elephant was dead. What was to be 
gained by further fighting? Yet, conscious of her 
duties of leadership, she trumpeted defiance. 

Though wounded, battered, and sick, the rhinoc¬ 
eros turned. Not that he wanted to fight; he had 
had more than enough. But there was only this 


254 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


one stretch of flat grassland in the immediate 
neighborhood, and the great grey two-horned beast 
knew well that if the elephant were to pursue him, 
he would have little chance in the brush. He stood 
his ground, head lowered, but he did not advance 
to the charge. Nor did the leader of the elephant 
herd. 

While in this state of mutual indecision, a wan¬ 
dering gust of wind, shifting slightly in direction, 
blew the hated man-smell to them both. 

At that, neither of the animals hesitated an in¬ 
stant. Deeper than either revenge or rage was the 
fear of Man. The rhinoceros wheeled and trotted 
on toward the river, while the leader of the ele¬ 
phants, mindful of her first duty to the herd, rushed 
into the scrub to gather them together and to 
stampede them away. 

In the frenzy of the discovery that Man was near 
them, she did not think about the calf who had 
been the origin of all the disturbance, if, indeed, she 
had noticed it at all. 

A few seconds later, both rhinoceros and ele¬ 
phants were gone. 

Spencer was panting with excitement. He was 
only brought to a realization that all was finished 
by the sound of his father’s voice. 


A RHINOCEROS FIGHT 255 

“ Do you want to shoot the calf, Son?” The 
Hunter asked, quietly. 

“ Shoot him, Father? Poor little beggar! What 
for? He didn’t do anything! ” 

“ We undertook to get a specimen of a calf ele¬ 
phant for the Museum, you know.” 

“ But—but, Father, he’s an orphan! ” 

“ That’s just exactly why I suggest it.” 

“ Why! I don’t see! ” 

“ Don’t you? The elephant herd has smelt us, 
that was clear from the way they ran. They won’t 
stop under twenty miles. That little chap could 
never catch up with the herd.” 

“ You mean he’s lost? ” 

“ Oh, he’ll probably try to follow until nightfall, 
and then-” 

"And then?” echoed Spencer. 

“ Then a lion or a leopard will get him. You can 
be sure he won’t be alive by two hours after sun¬ 
set. That’s the way of the jungle! ” 

"Well, in that case-” 

Spencer raised his rifle and aimed. But he did 
not fire. 

“ I—I can’t! ” he said. “ A poor little chap like 
that! ” 

The calf whimpered, put up his little trunk feebly 




256 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

and turned broadside, as though to go in search of 
his dead mother. 

The Hunter fired, and the elephant baby fell 
without a sound. 

“ The brain shot,” he said, explainingly; “ death 
was instantaneous, Spencer.” 

There was a lump in the boy’s throat. Somehow, 
the tiny elephant had seemed so helpless, so much 
in need of protection. 

His father put a hand kindly on his shoulder. 

“ Don’t get wrought up, Son,” he said gently. 
“ It may seem cruel, but it’s certainly kinder than 
leaving him to be mauled horribly and eaten by a 
lion! ” 



Courtesy of Wm. Heinemann. 


Chief Agbashan of Oban. 

This chief is supposed to be a “were-elephant, ” half human and 
half elephant. His home is in West Equatorial Africa, 
and at certain seasons of the year he lives alone 
with the wild elephants. 









With the trophies of the chase. 

Native hunters awaiting the blessing of the witch-doctor. 



CHAPTER XIV 


FACING A LION 

They made a temporary camp on the dambo. 
By digging a deep hole not far from the stream 
which ran beyond the belt of reeds whence the 
square-mouthed rhinoceros had come, pure drink¬ 
ing-water filtered in rapidly, and Spencer drank 
ravenously, till he was told to stop. His father had 
grasped the availability of the site for a camp, at 
the first glance. 

Game trails entered and crossed the wide clearing 
in all directions, and the forest through which they 
had passed was full of game. Guinea-fowl and 
wood pigeons make good fare, the ant-bear is a 
delicacy, and roasted porcupine, done Zulu fashion, 
is a dainty dish. There might be fish, too, in the 
stream. Salt could be found, in plenty, at the base 
of the termite ant-hills. Toothsome roots and 
tubers could be found in plenty. There was fruit 
for the picking up. 

There would be four days to wait. It would take 
that length of time for a runner to reach the near¬ 
est village and to come back with porters to carry 

257 


258 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


to Tbinba’s Kraal the skin of the elephant calf and 
the tusks of the cow elephant. The Hunter’s 
“ boy/’ Kamshengi, an Achikunda. warrior and ab¬ 
solutely fearless, was quite ready to go back alone 
through the jungle, if given a rifle and plenty of 
ammunition. 

These arrangements were made with clear preci¬ 
sion but with the utmost speed. The Hunter was 
feverishly anxious to be off on the trail of the vic¬ 
torious rhinoceros, for he judged that the battering 
the animal had received would make its travel slow. 
The hunt would be distinctly dangerous, for the 
rhino was already wounded and enraged, and Spen¬ 
cer was told to stay. 

“ I don’t like leaving you alone, Son,” said his 
father, “ though Ak’dibombo is an experienced 
hunter and knows the ways of the bush. But a 
white square-mouthed rhinoceros is a rarity, and I 
shouldn’t be doing my duty to the Museum if I 
neglected such a chance. I don’t think he will have 
gone very far, and it’s imperative for us to catch up 
with him before it’s too dark to shoot. After night¬ 
fall, he’ll be able to smell us and we won’t be able 
to see him. 

“ Now, listen carefully, Spencer. Let the two of 
you gather all the dry wood you can between now 


259 


FACING A LION 

and dark. You’ll have to work like blazes, mind, 
sun or no sun! Have your shotgun handy and 
pepper any vulture that comes near the carcasses. 
If you get an Adjutant-bird, so much the better. 

“ Before it gets dark, light two big fires, in semi¬ 
circles, Ak’dibombo will know how, outside the ani¬ 
mals, leaving a good twenty yards between the fires. 
You’ll get a lot of smoke from one or the other of 
them, but you’ll have to put up with that. It’s per¬ 
haps an extreme precaution, because, usually, one 
central fire is enough, but, since I’m not going to be 
here, myself, I’d rather feel that you were safe. 

“ Keep the fires going! Watch, rifle in hand. I 
don’t think there’s anything to be afraid of, but, 
after all, the African jungle isn’t a. city street! 
There’s no danger if the fires are kept going; there 
may be, if you let them out. 

“Keep awake! If you feel that you are being 
overpowered with sleep—and you were pretty well 
exhausted this morning—go and take some tea- 
leaves from the caddy and chew them. That’ll 
keep you awake. Remember! A big fire, your 
rifle never out of your hand after nightfall, and 
absolute wakefulness. Good luck, Son. We’re 
off! ” 

During the minute or two that his father and 


260 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


Mbumbwe were still in sight, Spencer hardly real¬ 
ized what was before him, so quickly had the ar¬ 
rangements been made. But when the reeds hid 
them, the sense of his being alone came over the 
boy in a rush, alone save for Ak’dibombo, who knew 
not a single word of any language but his own. The 
native knew just what was to be done, for 
Mbumbwe had translated The Hunter’s orders, 
word for word, as they had been given to Spencer. 

Ak’dibombo needed no urging. He knew, just as 
well as any one, the value of a fire, for wild animals 
fear it as much as they are attracted by it. With 
entire willingness he tore and dragged out of the 
brushwood fallen dry branches and young trees 
broken off by elephants on a previous visit. 
Despite the grilling heat of the sun, on that open 
space, he slaved at the work and Spencer helped 
him as much as he could, though the boy was con¬ 
scious that the morning’s march had sapped his 
strength. At least, the work kept him from brood¬ 
ing. 

It was all very well to say that wild animals do 
not attack Man. It was comforting, to a certain 
degree, to be assured that no wild animal is so 
recklessly daring as to leap over a fire. All rules 
have exceptions, and jungle rules not less than most; 


261 


FACING A LION 

lions have done that very thing, as the workers on 
the Cape-to-Cairo Railroad found to their cost. 
The European cemetery at Nairobi, capital of Brit¬ 
ish East Africa, contains over a hundred graves of 
men who have been mauled to death by lions. 

These were not pleasant thoughts to the boy, and 
he rather wished that he had not heard these tales, 
when coming down on the steamer. His nerves be¬ 
gan to play him tricks. The truth was that, as it 
drew toward evening and there was no sign of the 
return of his father and Mbumbwe, he got fright¬ 
ened, horribly frightened. 

The presence of the vultures was not calculated 
to make him any easier in mind, they always seem 
a hideously evil omen. Within half an hour of The 
Hunter’s departure, Spencer saw a dozen black 
specks circling in the sky. One of these, more dar¬ 
ing than his fellows, dropped like a plummet, 
opening his ragged black wings not more than three 
yards above the ground and coming to earth with 
an arrested swoop, running a yard or two with 
featherless neck outstretched, wings outspread and 
yellow beak ready to hook and tear. That vulture 
never closed its wings. A charge of heavy shot took 
it full, while running. Spencer was determined that 
none of the foul carrion-birds should touch the cow 


262 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

elephant which had put up so good a fight, or the 
little elephant who had died in his babyhood as the 
result of a few minutes 5 disobedience. 

Two other vultures came hurtling down—in spite 
of the presence of Spencer and Ak 5 dibombo—but, 
more prudently, they remained some forty or fifty 
yards away. That was annoying, for they were 
hidden in the dense grass, and their presence pre¬ 
vented Spencer from going to the help of the native 
“ boy 55 in securing firewood. So Ak’dibombo ran 
out into the grass and scared them up. Vultures 
rise slowly, on a long straight slope, and Spencer got 
the two of them with a right and left shot. 

An African Adjutant-bird, with his long bill, 
swooped down also, with his characteristic diving 
flight, and perched on a low ant-hill that peeped 
just above the grass. Where vultures dare not ven¬ 
ture, he would not go. Time enough when the 
other carrion-birds were there. They would give 
way readily enough before the threat of his pick¬ 
axe bill. He shared the same fate as the vultures. 

Spencer had taken no chances of being fireless. 
From the very moment of his father’s departure— 
save for the time necessary to dispose of the vul¬ 
tures and the Adjutant-bird—he and Ak’dibombo 
had dragged dry wood from the tree-clump, dragged 




FACING A LION 


263 


it and piled it with feverish energy. Better have 
too much than too little. Though Ak’dibombo was 
known as a u boy ”—as all gun-bearers are called— 
he was, in truth, a wiry hunter in the prime of life, 
ineradicably lazy like all natives, but able to work 
furiously hard in a single burst. He needed little 
urging, for he knew, just as well as the white hunter, 
the need of fire when fresh-killed carcasses are near. 

It was Ak’dibombo’s idea, too, that Spencer 
should walk, several times, in a wide circle, at a con¬ 
siderable distance from the carcasses, thoroughly to 
impregnate the ground with the white-man-smell. 
In fact, the boy made a double circle, thus. If the 
glare of the fire should attract curious beasts to the 
dambo, this circle of man-smell might keep them 
from coming too close. 

Not very long before sunset, Ak’dibombo called 
Spencer and pointed out to him the slinking form 
of a jackal, moving, cowardly-wise, just under cover, 
on the further side of the clearing. The boy reached 
for his rifle, but Ak’dibombo put out a restraining 
hand. As he could not speak English, he could not 
explain why he disapproved, but Spencer was satis¬ 
fied to obey. In jungle matters, the “ boy ” knew 
more* than he did, that was sure. 

Ak’dibombo lighted the two fires well before the 


264 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


light failed, content in the assurance that there was 
fuel enough for the whole night. The native’s 

v 

watchfulness went further to convince Spencer that 
the vicinity of fresh-killed meat was a dangerous 
stand. In a regular camp, it is less so, for the man- 
smell for a long distance around is so strong that 
jungle beasts are apt to keep away. 

At sunset, or a little after, the night cries of the 
jungle began. Chiefest of them all, and nearest, 
was the well-known chorus: 

“ Mbwee, mbwee! ” 

The jackals were there, a score of them, at least, 
to judge by the cries. What a feast awaited them, 
a whole cow elephant and her calf! 

A little later, there came another cry. This was 
more like a dog’s howl, a hound baying the moon, 
but it ended in a sudden run down the scale, like 
hysterical laughter. It was queer and terrifying. 
Spencer had never heard it before, during all his 
three weeks in the jungle, but he knew what it was, 
at once. There is no sound comparable to the dia¬ 
bolic laughing howl of the large spotted hyena. A 
carrion-eater, like the jackal, the spotted hyena is 
a more powerful and less cowardly beast. 

Far, far away, the whine of a hunting cheetah 
sounded in the forest, but of this beast there was 


FACING A LION 


265 


nought to fear, for, like his larger cousin, the 
leopard, the cheetah scorns a prey that he has not 
killed. 

As darkness came on—an old and waning moon 
would not rise until shortly before daylight—Spen¬ 
cer could see, in the ring of gloom just beyond the 
range of the firelight, numerous pairs of yellow 
eyes, glaring hungrily. There must have been a 
couple of dozen of them, and from the circle rose 
continuously the hunger cry: 

“ Mbwee, mbwee! ” 

Ak’dibombo paid them absolutely no concern. 
He knew the arrant cowardice of the jackal, even 
in packs, and Spencer, taking courage from the na¬ 
tive “ boy’s ” indifference, tried to ignore those pairs 
of eyes, moving and shifting about, but glaring at 
him constantly. Do his best, though, they made 
him feel uncomfortable. The feel of his rifle in his 
hands gave him a sort of strength. 

Then, absolutely silently, out from the darkness 
and above the fire, two lamp-like eyes came plung¬ 
ing down at him, exactly like some great beast at 
the end of a tremendous leap. 

Spencer yelled in sheer terror, snapped his rifle 
to the shoulder and fired at the eyes which were not 
half a dozen yards away. 


266 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


A white, ghost-like creature fluttered, wheeled, 
and fell upon the ground with a resounding thump, 
pierced through and through with the big-game 
bullet. It was an eagle-owl, the most luminous¬ 
eyed creature of the jungle. 

All was well, and the boy tried to laugh at his 
own fears. But he did not feel like laughing, just 
the same, and it was quite a long time before his 
heart came back to beating normally. He wondered 
if his father had heard the shot, for the crack of the 
big-game rifle was very different in its sonority to 
the short, sharp bark of a shotgun. 

After the shot, there had been silence. Only the 
squeaking bats, flying overhead, paid no heed. A 
night-jar, in the clump of woods, uttered his 
screech, like the creaking of a rusty wheel. 

But, ten minutes or so later, the jackals began 
their famine cries, and the eyes came and went 
again outside the glow of the fire. The spotted hy¬ 
ena howled again, nearer this time, and the laugh¬ 
ing horror was repeated from a little further away. 
The carrion-eaters were gathering to the feast and 
growing angrier as they found there was a barrier to 
their approach. 

Far in the distance, there came a low moaning 
cry, which seemed like some one in pain, and the 


FACING A LION 


267 


hairs on the boy’s head prickled at the thought that 
this might be his father. But, as the moaning con¬ 
tinued for some seconds, rising and falling, rising 
higher and falling again, with a sort of sobbing 
purr, Spencer recognized it as the satisfied roar of 
a Zambesi leopard which has made its kill. He 
had heard it twice before, when camping in the 
jungle. 

“ Mbwee, mbwee! ” 

The jackal cries irritated him, got on his nerves. 
Would they never stop? Their numbers had in¬ 
creased, and, in spite of himself, he could not help 
picturing a sudden rush of the animals through the 
two narrow outlets between the fires. He remem¬ 
bered the hunting-dogs, and a jackals jaw- 
strength is little less powerful. As for the spotted 
hyenas, he knew that their teeth go through the 
hardest bone. Against a pack, in the uncertain fire¬ 
light, two rifles would be of little avail. But the fire 
burned bravely on. 

Suddenly the cries of the jackals stopped. 

One whimper, and all was still. 

Everything was silenced. 

The eyes that surrounded the fire faded away 
and disappeared in the darkness. 

Ak’dibombo, who, until that moment, had shown 


268 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


no sense of trouble, reached out for his rifle. The 
movement was significant. 

Then- 

From somewhere, so deep that it seemed to come 
from underground, there came a low moaning, ris¬ 
ing rapidly, dividing into several tones simultane¬ 
ously, growling and whining in one, heart-shaking 
in its fearsomeness, then, swelling, rising higher, 
and suddenly breaking into roars so tempestuous, 
so terrible, that the ground vibrated and trembled. 
Again and again, until the menace deafened. Then 
it decreased rapidly, ending in a series of grunts, 
with a hiss of the breath at the end. 

“M’kango! Lion! ” cried Ak’dibombo, and 
threw a heap of dry wood on the fire. 

Spencer leaped to his feet, rifle ready. 

The lion was standing, not crouching. The tre¬ 
mendous bulk of his head and fore-quarters, almost 
doubled by his bristling mane, gave no hint of the 
long, lithe body behind. His yellow, angry eyes 
glared at the fire, and the ruddy glow was reflected 
back in them. 

Rifle went to shoulder. 

At that moment, Ak’dibombo seized a dead 
branch, thrust it into the fire, whirled it about and. 
raised a shower of sparks. 



269 


FACING A LION 

The lion gave a low growl, angry and defiant, but 
gave back a step. 

Spencer, his fears all gone, his nerves surprisingly 
tense and firm, held his aim. For the first time, he 
felt the astonishing clearness of mind of the true 
big-game hunter. He saw what to do. He knew 
what to do. 

The lion still stood his ground, motionless save 
for the tip of his tail, which was switching nerv¬ 
ously, as is the habit of all the cat tribe. Spencer 
watched the tail, thankful for all Mbumbwe’s teach¬ 
ing. Should the lion throw his tail up in the air, 
straight and stiff as a bar of steel, there was not a 
second to be lost in firing. It is one of the signs 
preparatory to a leap. 

The boy’s aim was steady, just below the jowl 
and in the chest. Owing to the lion’s pose, head 
low down between the shoulders, he dared not aim 
for the heart; he must be content with a lung shot. 
An experienced hunter, perfectly sure of himself, 
might have tried for the brain, but, in the uncertain 
firelight, the bullet might run an inch too high and 
glance off the skull. 

Spencer longed to press the trigger, he was con¬ 
vinced of the sureness of his aim, but he had been 
warned again and again of the danger of wounding 


270 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

any animal powerful enough to do him harm, and 
he knew that, though the lion does not possess great 
vitality against wounds, almost invariably he lives 
for a few seconds after a vital shot and those few 
seconds give time enough for a death-spring and a 
fatal crunch. Those graves at Nairobi! 

For as much as a minute, perhaps two minutes, 
they faced each other, boy and beast, with the fire 
between. 

Ak’dibombo, holding his rifle in one hand, piled 
more and more dry wood on the fire with the other 
hand, till the upleaping flames showed the lion as 
clearly as though a ruddy sunlight were playing 
upon his rufous hide. 

A hungry lion, or an old solitary lion, is a daring 
animal and will take almost any risk; but a well-fed 
lion, in the jungle, is not given to recklessness. 
Zebra, young buffalo, or antelope is his favored 
meal. The prey is always seized from behind, and 
only should the first bound fail will the lion spring 
from the front, at the throat. It is thus that the 
sable antelope has, at times, driven off a lion with 
his long twisted horns, but, in every case, the ante¬ 
lope has been too badly mauled to live. No crea¬ 
ture can tear more cruelly than a dying lion. 

Here, in the far hinterland of the jungle, with 


FACING A LION 


271 


game on every side, with eland on the plains and 
water-buck in the lowlands, the lion had no need 
of desperate tactics. The fire cowed him, and, with 
the telepathy of the creatures of the wild, he felt 
that the two Man-things, on the farther side of the 
flames, were not afraid of him. In that case, it 
might be well for him to be afraid of them; that is 
jungle logic. 

With a mighty and disappointed growl, he leaped 
sideways into the darkness, and Ak’dibombo, at the 
top of his voice, roared out a high-pitched native 
song of triumph. 

Not very many minutes later, Spencer heard 
again the hunger cry: 

“ Mbwee, mbwee! ” 

He welcomed the jackals howls, now. They 
knew better than he. The King of Beasts was gone. 

The hours passed calmly, then; only the jackals 
and hyenas remained near. The night-sounds of 
the jungle did not slacken, but Spencer’s mind was 
at ease. The worst had threatened, and he had 
faced it. He was tensely strung, nervous, and all 
his senses were at their highest power. Never had 
he seemed to see so far in the dark, to hear with such 
acuteness. The intensity of the big-game hunter 
was beginning to come to him. 


272 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

It was nearly midnight when a distant 
“ Coo-ee! ” told him of the return of his father, 
and, a few minutes later, he saw the two figures 
coming into the circle of the firelight. 

“Any adventures, Son? ” his father queried. 

“ Oh,” replied Spencer, with an assumed air of 
indifference, “there was just an old lion around! ” 
But the break in his voice betrayed the strain of the 
excitement. 

“So! ” exclaimed his father, in surprise. “You 
didn’t fire? ” 

“No, I was going to, oh, for ever so long. But he 
went away, at last.” 

“ H’m, that’s queer. Lions do eat carrion, if it’s 
freshly killed, sometimes, but I’m surprised at their 
doing so, here, where there’s plenty of game around. 
Tell me about it! ” 

The boy recounted the adventure, as calmly as he 
could, for he knew his father’s dislike of sensation¬ 
alism. In return, The Hunter told of his shooting 
the rhinoceros, just before sundown. As he had ex¬ 
pected, the quest had been a dangerous one, and 
Mbumbwe had escaped only by the narrowest mar¬ 
gin. 

“ I was lucky,” said The Hunter. “ My heart 
shot didn’t stop him and he was within about five 


FACING A LION 273 

yards of Mbumbwe when I risked the brain shot 
and got him fair.” 

“Mbumbwe was luckier! ” commented Spencer. 

They chatted on for a little while, The Hunter 
deliberately carrying on a quiet conversation to 
give the boy’s nerves a chance to relax. 

“ But why did you leave the carcass of the rhi¬ 
noceros? ” queried Spencer. “ Won’t the jackals 
get him? ” 

“ I built a big-enough fire to last most of the 
night, and, anyway, jackals can’t do very much to a 
rhinoceros’ armor-plated hide. Spotted hyenas 
might, but they’re notoriously afraid of fire. You 
see, Son, I plan to skin the elephant calf, first thing 
in the morning, and to drag it to where the rhi¬ 
noceros lies. We can’t pull the rhino here! As for 
the cow elephant’s tusks, they won’t run away. 

“What’s that, Mbumbwe? Tea? Good boy! 
Where’s your pannikin, Son? ” 

The hot liquid finished the task of soothing the 
boy’s nerves, and he had hardly drunk it down be¬ 
fore a terrible sleepiness overpowered him. He 
sidled over, his head on his arm, and, in a moment, 
he was asleep. Lions might come or lions might 
go; he cared nothing. His father and Mbumbwe 
were there. 


CHAPTER XV 


» 

SHOOTING THE OUTLAW 

Nearly a week elapsed at the camp on the 
dambo before the rhinoceros’ hide, the calf ele¬ 
phant’s hide and the cow elephant’s hide were ready 
for transport to the main camp at Tbinba’s Kraal, 
where, assuredly, the other members of the Museum 
Expedition must have arrived by this time. 

Hunter Wolland had thought, at first, of accom¬ 
panying the porters, but so much enticing news of 
fresh spoor had come in, so many elephant herds 
were in the vicinity, that The Hunter decided there 
could be no better time or place to carry on his 
studies of elephant life, and to secure for the Mu¬ 
seum at least one heavily-tusked bull. Spencer was 
more and more enthralled by the jungle and gave 
his father and Mbumbwe no peace with his ques¬ 
tions. 

“ Look here, Son,” said his father one evening, 
“ let me tell you the life story of an elephant, from 
start to finish, then you’ll know it, once for all, and 
you won’t plague me with questions about things 
you ought to know.” 

Spencer made no reply to this, he was too anxious 

274 


SHOOTING THE OUTLAW 275 

to get his father to talk, for there were a thousand 
things about elephants which, as yet, he did not 
know. 

“ The life-story of an elephant,” his father be¬ 
gan, “ is really one of the simplest kind. Unlike 
most beasts of the wild, he is free from that per¬ 
petual strain of the jungle—the beasts of prey to 
hunt their food, the preyed-upon to escape with 
their lives, as long as they can. The elephant 
knows no kind of danger after he is half-grown, 
though the early years may be perilous, if he wan¬ 
ders from the herd. 

“ An elephant baby is fairly small, when born, not 
quite three feet high, and his skin is as smooth and 
pink as that of a young pig. For three days after 
birth, the mother does not stir an inch from the 
white-tufted feather-grass which is the baby ele¬ 
phant’s first bed. Though an elephant must feed 
almost continuously, the mother elephant endures 
this enforced fast, stripping to nakedness every 
growing thing within reach of her trunk, save the 
little patch of grass where the baby lies. 

“ Drink is a more imperious necessity. On the 
second day, the baby elephant has been helped to 
his feet, but on the fourth day, he must make shift 
to walk, at least as far as the water. He goes ahead 



276 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

of his mother, guided by light touches of her trunk 
upon his back, protected against every sort of harm 
by the gleaming tusks overhead. There is never 
very far to go, on this first walk, for a mother ele¬ 
phant takes good care to be near water when baby¬ 
time approaches. 

“At such times, a mother elephant seeks soli¬ 
tude, and woe to any creature which comes within 
reach of her trunk! She knows no mercy, then, and 
no discrimination; every living thing, from the 
tiniest lizard to the hungriest old lion, keeps well 
out of the way of a cow elephant with a new-born 
calf. She cannot be tempted away from her calf 
by any feinted attack—such as spotted hyenas love 
to try—for she knows that all the carnivores, large 
and small, ask nothing better than a dinner of tiny 
elephant calf. Such a dainty dish, however, is 
usually beyond their hopes. 

“After a couple of weeks or so, when the little 
elephant’s pillar-like legs are less shaky and trem¬ 
bling, the cow elephant leaves the region which she 
had chosen for its loneliness and begins her search 
for a good-sized herd to which to join herself. Ele¬ 
phants are thoroughly social beings, and have the 
herd instinct very strongly.” 

“ Do the herds run big, as a rule, Father? ” 


SHOOTING THE OUTLAW 277 

“ The one we saw, that first night, was a fair ex¬ 
ample. In this part of the country, a herd of cow 
elephants, with their calves, may run from fifty to 
sixty animals. Herds of bull elephants are very 
much smaller, from half a dozen to twenty, as a 
rule. I have never seen the spoor of any larger 
number, travelling together.” 

Mbumbwe, who was listening carefully, tapped 
his long-handled axe on the ground, in approval. 

“ You have often heard, Spencer, that elephants 
sleep standing, or leaning against a large tree or a 
termite ant-hill. This is very generally true, as 
Mbumbwe told you, but the cow elephant, during 
the first few weeks of her little calf’s life, nearly 
always lies down, in order that the little one may lie 
down also, closely guarded between the crooks of his 
mother’s huge and low-set knees. Neither the most 
reckless lion nor the most treacherous leopard will 
dare to attack there, and, in any case, in the day¬ 
time both the lion and the leopard are asleep.” 

“ What about the hunting-dogs, Father? They 
hunt by day. Wouldn’t they like a taste of ele¬ 
phant calf? ” 

“ I don’t doubt it for a moment, but I should be 
sorry for a pack of hunting-dogs which dared come 
near a cow elephant at such a time. An elephant 


278 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


can kick with any foot in either direction, and you 
saw for yourself, a few days ago, the power of that 
kick! A blow which can break a rhinoceros’ ribs 
would smash a hunting-dog to pulp. What is 
more, though an elephant has a great objection to 
using her trunk as a weapon, in such a case you 
can be sure that blows would rain to right and left, 
and each one would break a dog’s spine. Have you 
ever heard of hunting-dogs attacking an elephant 
calf, with its mother, Mbumbwe? ” 

“ No, Bwana; dogs too much know.” 

“ Exactly! Well, to return to our story. A cow 
elephant and her calf will wander far and wide un¬ 
til they meet with a herd which they can join. 
Such a herd is always led by an old cow elephant, 
past the days of calving, well versed in the lore of 
the jungle, authoritative in manner and perfectly 
able and willing to prod any unruly member of the 
herd into submission. It is not often that there is 
need of such form of discipline, for a leaderless ele¬ 
phant herd does not exist, and obedience to the 
leader seems to be instinctive. 

“ Sometimes, it is true, a vigorous mature bull 
may have five or six cow elephants, and their calves, 
in his train, and he may admit the arrival of new 
followers. Such an arrangement rarely lasts long, 


SHOOTING THE OUTLAW 279 

ilinless the bull is a natural leader and wants a herd 
of his own, although he is not yet old enough or 
strong enough to be able to boss a herd of his own 
sex. Many great herd bulls have gamed their ex¬ 
perience this way. 

“ In general, though, bull elephants and cow ele¬ 
phants keep apart, except during the mating season. 
Even then, though paring may induce some animals 
to remain together for a few weeks, the herds do not 
mingle. Old cow elephants and old bull elephants 
are never together; there is no ‘ Darby and Joan’ 
in the elephant world. 

“ You will notice, Spencer, that I spoke about 
experience. While elephant life is simple, in its 
essentials, because of the absence of foes, a good 
deal of jungle craft is needed for the leadership of 
a herd. Everywhere, even in the furthermost dis¬ 
tricts of the jungle, little villages of native huts are 
to be found; where there are native villages there 
are also native hunters, well-skilled in the primitive 
ways of elephant-hunting—and very effective some 
of them are! A herd leader must be experienced 
enough to detect the presence of the most cun¬ 
ningly-covered pitfall, or to detect, almost by in¬ 
stinct, the string-trap of the weighted poison spear 
poised above an elephant trail. 


280 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


“ She—or he, as the case may be—must have a 
highly specialized knowledge of the lie of the forest, 
and a pertinacious memory for mucky or swampy 
places in which elephants might be mired after a 
heavy rain. She must know in which parts the 
fruits are at their ripest and juiciest at every season 
of the year. She must be able to judge which parts 
of the forest are apt to be swept by forest fires after 
a prolonged season of drought. She must know all 
the tracks to water, for elephants are thirsty crea¬ 
tures, and, when the streams are dry, she must be 
able to dig the huge sloping holes, deep, deep in the 
bed of the stream, to get the little water that may 
remain. When even this resource fails, she must 
know the regions rich in the ntamba creeper, the 
stems of which possess a fresh water which is de¬ 
licious to the elephant and which will assuage the 
pangs of thirst, or where grows the large mbuie 
fruit, also succulent and thirst-quenching. She 
must know, too, where is to be found the medicinal 
mud which elephants require as an antidote to fly- 
bite and jungle accidents. 

“A herd leader must know the tsetse fly belts, 
and it is her duty to lead the herd out of them as 
quickly as possible, and to see that mud-baths are 
not neglected immediately afterwards; while from 




SHOOTING THE OUTLAW 281 

an elephant-fly region, a herd with little calves 
must immediately be led away. She must be in 
advance at any point where danger is suspected, the 
first to swim a river, and it is her part to scare the 
crocodiles away.” 

“ Will crocodiles attack elephants, Father? ” 

" White hunters declare that they will not, but a 
good many native trackers affirm that they do. 
Certainly, it happens, sometimes, after a herd has 
crossed a stream, that one of the smaller elephants 
is found to be missing. That cannot be by drown¬ 
ing, for an elephant swims with absolute ease, 
though he looks as though he were deep in the 
water. 

“ I suppose you know the story the Zulus tell of 
how the elephant punished the audacious croco¬ 
dile? ” 

“ No, Father! ” 

“ It’s a very simple story. It is said to have hap¬ 
pened on the Limpopo, the ‘ great, grey-green, 
greasy Limpopo River all set about with fever-trees ’ 
of Kipling’s immortal story, which you probably 
know by heart.” 

“ ‘ The Elephant’s Child ’ ? Oh, I know that 
one! ” 

“ I thought so. Well, this is a Zulu story, as I 


282 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


said. In the old, old days, after all the elephants 
had got their trunks—perhaps in the fashion that 
Kipling describes, or, perhaps in the manner that 
I taught you, Spencer, in evolution from the 
Moeritherium to the Paleomastodon, and so on—a 
good-sized herd of elephants was crossing the greasy 
Limpopo. But, just as the last elephant was sludg¬ 
ing up the muddy bank of the stream, a particularly 
daring and hungry crocodile swished forward under 
water, and, setting himself firmly in the mud, 
grasped the elephant’s leg with his teeth. 

“ Now, a full-grown crocodile is no light weight, 
and his jaw-muscles are tremendous, but they are as 
nothing when compared with the muscular power of 
an elephant’s leg. The big bull just kicked forward, 
violently, and the crocodile was sent sprawling on 
the bank, with half his teeth broken out from his 
jaws. 

“ Before he had time to realize where he was or 
what had happened, the angry bull elephant just 
wrapped his trunk around that crocodile so quickly 
that the dazed saurian had no time to snap. Then 
he swirled his trunk upward, and held the croco¬ 
dile high in air, ignoring the clacking jaws and the 
whipping, scaly tail. Thus the elephant marched 
on, trunk in air, for a mile or two, until he found 


SHOOTING THE OUTLAW 283 

a hollow tree into which he stuck the crocodile, 
head-first. 

" The monkeys, who had followed the whole per¬ 
formance with huge glee, shrieked with laughter, 
and they carried the tale of the crocodile’s discom¬ 
fiture far and wide over the forest. All the animals 
came to have a look, for there was not one who had 
any pity for the crocodile. 

“ The leopard purred with satisfaction, and the 
hyena laughed himself into hysterics; the antelopes 
leaped for joy, and the blue wildebeest with the big 
head nodded it until he got a headache; the lion 
roared his pleasure, and even the gloomy Cape buf¬ 
falo admitted that the deed was very well done. To 
cap everything, a full-grown wart-hog boar tried to 
smile, but this was such a fearful and hideous thing 
to see, that all the animals ran away. They left 
the crocodile stuck there, and went and mocked 
every crocodile they met on every river they saw. 
Ever since then, so say the Zulus, a crocodile keeps 
away when he sees a full-grown elephant, for very 
shame.” 

“A true story! ” commented Mbumbwe. 

“ To this day,” continued The Hunter, “ an ele¬ 
phant-herd leader always trumpets loudly, when he 
comes to a wide stream, as a signal to the crocodiles 


284 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


to keep away. Even so, when younger elephants 
have to swim broad streams, they do so, usually, 
with an older animal on either side to act as a con¬ 
voy of crocodile-destroyers. 

“An elephant calf remains very closely beside his 
mother for the first three or four years, until the 
cow elephant leaves the herd at some mating time. 
Then he remains, a little more independent, but still 
absolutely dependent on the protection of the cow 
herd, for a good many years more. As I said at the 
beginning, Spencer, it is a very simple life. One 
week is like another, feeding, drinking and travel¬ 
ling by night, sleeping in the day. 

“ By the time he has reached seven to ten years 
old, a young elephant gets to be about six feet high, 
and his permanent tusks are developing. He is be¬ 
ginning to be able to take care of himself. He soon 
comes to scorn the company of the cows and calves, 
and, in nine cases out of ten, he joins a herd of 
youngsters of his own age, generally led by a young 
bull of some fifteen to twenty years of age, who has 
assumed the responsibilities of leadership.” 

“ How do they pick their leaders? ” queried the 
boy. “ Do they fight for it, and the best one 
wins? ” 

“Not at all! Elephants only fight seriously to- 


SHOOTING THE OUTLAW 285 

gether during the pairing season. Leadership seems 
to be instinctive. There are animals who are born 
with a definite sense of leadership, a natural domi¬ 
nance in which the others acquiesce. I have seen 
herds in which the leader was not by any means the 
biggest tusker. 

“ Yet this position of eminence is a very preca¬ 
rious one. It is maintained by merit, only. Any 
herd leader who has led his or her fellows into dan¬ 
ger, or who fails to lead them to regions where 
food is plentiful and water is easy to find, is simply 
turned out. There is no trouble about it, no fight¬ 
ing. The old leader is disobeyed, that is all, and 
some new self-appointed leader is obeyed. It would 
be no use for the disgraced chief to fight. The 
spirit of the herd would be against him. He is made 
to feel that he has failed and is no longer wanted. 
There is no protest. The will of the herd is su¬ 
preme.” 

“And the big bulls are managed by a leader in 
the same way? ” 

“ Exactly the same. Generally, age, size and 
dominance tell the tale, but it happens, sometimes, 
that a herd leader becomes too tyrannical, and, in 
punishing another elephant, the younger one rebels. 
This is a personal matter, and a fight to the death 


286 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

ensues. Occasionally a rejected and defeated herd 
leader may recover from his wounds, but never does 
he seek to regain his lost position. Usually he be¬ 
comes an ‘ outlaw/ which, in regions near to the 
settlements, is often very much the same thing as a 
f rogue.’ 

“ Before the elephant outlaw there are two paths. 
Either, when pairing-time comes, he may answer 
the cooing call of some lonely cow elephant, and 
fight all comers successfully for her sake, thus be¬ 
ginning a new family of his own which may grow 
into a herd, little by little; or else he may scorn all 
tender blandishments, he will resent the company 
and presence of every other elephant, and he will 
live in a solitary state, growing more savage and 
vicious every day. For some reason, as yet not un¬ 
derstood, outlaws are generally among the biggest 
elephants and carry the heaviest ivory.” 

“ Straight words, Bwanal ” interjected the sur¬ 
prised Mbumbwe. 

“ Well, we shall have a chance to see,” responded 
The Hunter. “ I was going to tell you, Son. This 
morning, the extra porters for whom I had sent, to 
carry the rhinoceros hide—it’s a terrific weight!— 
reported to Mbumbwe the discovery of the spoor of 
an immense solitary or outlaw elephant. Two 



SHOOTING THE OUTLAW 287 

hand-spans in breadth, they make it. That’s a 
vague measurement, of course, but a native is not 
likely to be mistaken as to the comparative size of 
a spoor. Native knowledge is very restricted, as to 
range, but it is peculiarly exact concerning the 
things they know.” 

“And we’re going to follow that spoor, Father? ” 
“At dawn.” 

“Am I going? ” 

“ I’d thought of taking you. Why not? You’re 
quite rested, now. So far, we haven’t seen any real 
tuskers, and I’m not going back to the States with¬ 
out a ten-foot pair of tusks! ” 

“ Ten feet! Why, we’ve seen nothing like that! ” 
“You’re forgetting! We’ve only seen cow ele¬ 
phants, so far, and there’s no comparison between 
male and female ivories. The record tusk of an 
African cow elephant is only six and one-half feet 
long, and weighs only thirty-six pounds.” 

“And bull tusks are so much heavier? ” 
“Incomparably; three or four times as much. 
The heaviest tusk known is in a museum in Lon¬ 
don. It weighs two hundred and twenty-six and 
one-half pounds, and is over two feet in circum¬ 
ference. It is ten feet two inches on the outside of 
the curve. 


288 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

“ The longest and finest pair of African elephant 
tusks in the world is in our own National Museum 
at Washington. The longest of the two measures 
eleven feet five and one-half inches on the curve, 
and the pair weigh two hundred and ninety-three 
pounds. Think of that, Son! Eleven and a half 
feet long! That’s pushing the mammoth pretty 
hard.” 

“And Indian elephants’ tusks are smaller? ” 

“A great deal. The longest one on record is only 
eight feet nine inches on the curve, and the heaviest 
one weighs one hundred and sixty-one pounds. 
You see, Spencer, the difference is enormous. Peo¬ 
ple don’t know what an African elephant is like. 
As with the square-mouthed rhinoceros, they’ve 
never seen one. 

“ No, I don’t think I’m putting my standard too 
high, when I demand a ten-foot tusk. There ought 
to be a score of bulls in these parts with ‘ teeth ’ like 
that.” 

At sunrise, they started on the spoor. There was 
no doubt but that this was a herd outlaw, for at no 
time did his spoor join that of a herd. Shortly be¬ 
fore noon, the hunters found the spoor of a small 
herd of bulls, all of big size, which had crossed the 
track of the outlaw, a short time before. The herd 


SHOOTING THE OUTLAW 289 

spoor was much more recent, and the tape-measure 
of the imprint showed that at least two of the bulls 
would run to eleven feet high, full-grown bulls, evi¬ 
dently. For all that the hunters could tell, there 
might be just as heavy ivories in the herd as in the 
outlaw whose spoor they were following. 

Mbumbwe’s advice was for following the herd of 
nine bulls. 

“ Bwana,” he said, persuasively, “ rogue ele¬ 
phant’s teeth perhaps old and broken. More chance 
with herd.” 

This was an argument that carried some weight, 
but, with the “ hunch ” that most jungle-lovers 
possess, The Hunter negatived the suggestion. 

“ We can pick up that herd again, any time, 
Mbumbwe,” he said, “ now that we know where to 
follow the spoor. No. Go on. I want to see that 
big fellow, at least! ” 

They tracked the outlaw for three days of hot, 
rough marching. That he was a beast of unusual 
size was made evident by the thickness of the trees 
he had broken down, that he was vicious was shown 
by his destructiveness, for he broke down three or 
four times more than he needed for food. 

Mbumbwe was an excellent tracker and never 
lost the spoor, a far from easy task, for an ele- 


290 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


phant’s feet are spongy and leave no impression on 
hard grass-land. 

It was early in the morning of the fourth day 
that Mbumbwe, who was leading, dropped bank. 

“ Bwana! Nkhlovu! (Master! Elephant!) 
Tusks, three-man load! ” 

Spencer’s excitement went to fever height with 
a jump. In native parlance, this meant the biggest 
kind of tusks, for tusks under sixty pounds are 
counted a one-man load, tusks up to one hundred 
and twenty pounds are counted a two-man load, 
and a three-man load implies anything over. 

The light feathers of owl-down, dropped from 
Mbumbwe’s hand, floated directly behind the hunt¬ 
ers. They were exactly right for the wind. They 
moved forward silently. Spencer wanted to pass 
the word to his father, who was just behind, but he 
knew the elephant’s keenness of hearing and did 
not dare to speak. 

As nearly always happens, the stalkers came on 
the elephant suddenly. One moment, there was 
nothing. The next, not forty yards away, directly 
in front of them, loomed the form of the herd out¬ 
law. 

In size, he was enormous, and though his worn 
and roughened tusks—ten-footers, without a doubt 


SHOOTING THE OUTLAW 291 


—showed signs of age, they were not broken and the 
tips showed white and glistening. His vast body no 
longer possessed the elasticity of youth, and the big 
bones showed under the gnarled and seamed hide. 
His ears were tattered, but they did not curl at the 
tips. He was old, more than a hundred years, cer¬ 
tainly, but he had not reached old age. He looked 
the outlaw that he was: a dangerous beast. 

As it chanced, Spencer was following directly be¬ 
hind Mbumbwe, his father having stopped, a few 
yards back, to remove a thorn which had wedged 
itself into his trouser leg, under the crook of the 
knee. 

Suddenly, ignoring all caution, Mbumbwe 
shouted: 

“ Shoot, Young Bwana! Mwari! Quick! ” 

This was the first time that Spencer had heard 
Mbumbwe call on “ Mwari ” (God) and he knew 
that the word was used only in great crises. 
Mbumbwe saw some peril that he could not see, 
himself. 

The elephant was broadside on, a perfect shot. 

As Mbumbwe shouted, the outlaw's trunk went 
up, for a sniff. His bleary red eyes glinted wick¬ 
edly. He would catch the man-smell, momentarily, 
and if so, he would charge. 


292 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

The danger was imminent, for, if the outlaw 
wheeled, it would be tenfold more difficult to stop 
him, since, owing to the convexity of the African 
elephant’s skull, the head shot, from in front, is ter¬ 
ribly risky. 

As when facing the lion, that queer calmness and 
decision which is known as “ hunter’s nerve ” came 
to Spencer with the suddenness of an electric shock. 

Almost without thinking, certainly without con¬ 
sciously aiming, the boy raised his .303 magazine 
rifle and fired at a point four inches forward of the 
ear-hole just below a line with the eye, allowing a 
half-inch or so for the fact that he was not as tall 
as a full-grown man and hence his bullet must fol¬ 
low a slightly different angle. 

The crack of his rifle was followed, scarcely three- 
quarters of a second later, by his father’s gun. The 
Hunter, being about six yards behind, had fired for 
the elephant’s heart, at a point about six inches 
behind the curve of the great ear—allowing for the 
tattered edges—and on a line from that point to 
about three inches below the eye. 

Both shots went home, but, though vitally 
wounded by both bullets, the vigorous old outlaw 
wheeled and charged. 

For one flash of an instant, Spencer struggled 


SHOOTING THE OUTLAW 293 

with the natural desire to run. But: “ Stand your 
ground and shoot! ” was a piece of advice that had 
been dinned into his ears so often, that he obeyed. 
His magazine rifle giving him the chance, he fired 
a second, a third, and finally a fourth shot. As it 
turned out, only one of these found its mark. 

The elephant charged on, but scarcely the mad¬ 
dest outlaw elephant can prevent swerving with the 
crack and flash of a rifle directly in front of him. 
The Hunter’s rifle spoke at the same time, piercing 
the lungs. Though bent on killing, the outlaw was 
forced to swerve. Then, when nearly opposite 
Spencer and at not more than six yards distance, all 
of a sudden the huge beast collapsed with a fearful 
crash. He fell kneeling, his trunk bent under him, 
his tusks buried deep in the ground. 

He had not screamed. He had not made a 
sound. After he fell, not a muscle quivered. 

Brain and heart shot had both been perfect. 

The outlaw’s solitary life of ostracism from his 
fellows was at an end. Never again would he see 
the herds from afar and know himself to be a thing 
apart, without a friend. He would not spend long 
years in loneliness, with old age making his burden 
ever more bitter to bear. Death had come swiftly, 
and without pain. 


CHAPTER XVI 


THE PLACE OF PEACE 

On the third day of their spooring after the out¬ 
law, Mbumbwe had noted the track of a very old 
elephant, also a solitary, making his lonely way in 
the direction of the supposedly inaccessible rock- 
valleys that lie far to the north of Katumbi, and 
which frown above the narrow defiles that lead by 
intricate windings into Lake Nyasa. 

Mbumbwe had stopped and looked at it a long 
time. 

“ Bwana,” he said seriously. “ One goes to 
Ghost-Land! ” 

The Hunter had remarked the spoor and taken 
careful note of the phrase, for he knew well to what 
the Matabele referred, but he had made no answer, 
for his heart had been set on following the spoor 
of the outlaw, the tracking of which had been so 
splendidly successful. 

Now, that he had secured for the Museum the 

skins of a baby elephant, of a cow elephant, and 

of an outlaw with ten-foot tusks—the longest tusk 

measured a trifle over three inches more—the re- 

294 


THE PLACE OF PEACE 295 

membrance of the spoor of the aged elephant 
tempted him sorely. It would complete his col¬ 
lection to a marvel. 

Without explaining all his reasons to the Mata- 
bele tracker, The Hunter sent back to the camp on 
the dambo for porters to skin and carry the out¬ 
law’s hide and tusks away. Spencer rejoiced in 
advance, for African natives always make a riotous 
feast over a dead elephant, with much singing and 
dancing, and the boy never grew weary of watch¬ 
ing the native ceremonies in all their wildness, for, 
in this far-off corner of the jungle, there was no 
touch of the white man’s influence. What stories 
he would have to tell, when he got home! 

This feast proved to be the most spectacular of 
all, for it was thought to be the last. Besides, as 
it turned out, the big outlaw was known to be a 
man-killer. Spencer’s bullet had put an end to the 
chief menace of the tribe, and satisfied revenge 
made the savages all the more delirious in their joy. 

The feast lasted three days, and, on the fourth, 
the caravan of porters left for its long journey to 
the main camp at Tbinba’s Kraal. 

When they were gone, The Hunter suggested to 
Mbumbwe that he proposed to follow the spoor of 
the aged elephant which was making its way up 


296 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


into the hills. For the first time, he encountered 
mutiny. Positively and emphatically, Mbumbwe 
refused to go. 

“Track real elephant, Bwana, yes; everywhere. 
Old spoor, new spoor, I find all. I not track ghost- 
elephant, Bwana, no! ” 

“Nonsense! ” declared The Hunter. “How can 
he be a ghost-elephant? Isn’t that a real spoor that 
we saw, Mbumbwe? ” 

“ Real spoor, Bwana, true. Old elephant not 
dead; dead, soon; following ghost-elephant leader. 
True! ” 

Mbumbwe’s fears were genuine, and they were 
not his, alone. Ak’dibombo refused with equal 
definiteness, and even Kamshengi, the Achikunda 
hunter and as fearless a native as ever stepped, 
turned pale at the mere thought of following that 
ghost-led spoor. Bribes, promises and threats were 
of no avail, and The Hunter knew that he dare not 
use force in such a case, or the whole camp might 
desert him, without notice. That had happened to 
white men, before, and an expedition, without 
guides, in the farthermost African jungle, faces 
considerable danger. 

Finally, an appeal to Mbumbwe’s pride resulted 
in a compromise. Stung by a taunt on his man- 


297 


THE PLACE OF PEACE 

hood, the Matabele agreed to spoor the elephant for 
them, “ every morning Jungle-Cock crows.” 

“ Now, what the deuce does that mean? ” queried 
The Hunter. 

" I tell,” said Mbumbwe. “ Very old story. Big 
Man, First Man, one day very hungry. Go in forest, 
with woman, get palm nuts. Climb up palm, be¬ 
gin to cut. Black Fly buzz in his eyes, nose, all 
over face. Big Man drop knife. Wife see knife 
dropping, jump aside. Knife not hit her. 

“ Wife jump aside over little Brown Serpent. 
Serpent frightened. Serpent run down hole of 
Striped Rat. Serpent ask water. Striped Rat 
frightened, run out of hole, up tree. Stop near nest 
of Plantain-Eater Bird, with chicks. Plantain- 
Eater Bird frightened, raise war-cry. Black Monkey 
frightened by war-cry, jump on Ntun-fruit. Ntun- 
fruit too ripe, fall off tree. Ntun-fruit fall on head 
of Elephant. Elephant frightened, run away. Ele¬ 
phant run so fast, not see big rope-creeper Mfinn. 
Mfinn catch Elephant by neck. Elephant more 
frightened, try to break Mfinn by running twice 
round ant-hill. Ant-hill smash all over nest of 
Jungle-Hen, break all eggs. Jungle-Hen angry, tell 
Jungle-Cock not to crow. Never any more day. 

“ Three days, and nights, all dark. Sun fright- 


298 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

ened. Not dare come till Jungle-Cock tell him 
world safe. 

“ Big Man, First Man, frightened. Ask Jungle- 
Cock why not tell Sun to come. Jungle-Cock say 
Jungle-Hen tell him to, Jungle-Hen say ant-hill 
break eggs, White Ants say Mfinn creep break 
house, Mfinn creeper say Elephant drag her away, 
Elephant say Ntun-fruit fall on head, Ntun-fruit 
say Black Monkey knock her down, Black Monkey 
say Plantain-Eater Bird frighten him; Plantain- 
Eater Bird say Striped Rat frighten her; Striped 
Rat say Brown Serpent frighten her; Brown Ser¬ 
pent say First Woman frighten her; First Woman 
say Knife frighten her; Knife say First Man let 
fall; First Man ask Black Fly. Black Fly say noth¬ 
ing but ‘ Buzz-z! ’ 

“ First Man punish Black Fly. Must live always 
where bad smell. Punish all the others, different 
ways. Not punish Jungle-Cock. If punish Jungle- 
Cock, not crow, Sun never come. Some places, 
nights very long, moons long, no Jungle-Cock 
there. Ghost-countries. Old elephants go ghost- 
countries to die. No Jungle-Cock. When Jungle- 
Cock not crow, I frightened, run away.” 

This extraordinary tale—which is more often 
found in West Africa than in East Africa—had, at 


THE PLACE OF PEACE 299 

least, the advantage of being some sort of a savage 
explanation. Mbumbwe would track the spoor for 
them, at least a part of the way. 

“ As I see it,” said The Hunter, to Spencer, “ this 
superstition is one that is natural to peoples who 
know the jungle and who know the jungle only. 
When we reach the heights where there is no timber 
and no jungle growth, there will be no jungle-fowl. 
All African jungle natives are afraid of barren 
rocks; they believe them to be haunted. They have 
a superstition that trees are a protection against 
ghosts. I’m afraid that if this spoor leads into the 
mountains, after we get into the barren country, 
we’ll have to follow it for ourselves.” 

“ I’m game to try it! ” declared the boy. 

“ If you weren’t,” said his father, “ I’d go alone! 
I’ve a notion that we’re on the track of a great 
discovery, something, perhaps, that no white man 
has ever seen.” 

“ Ghost-Land? ” queried Spencer, smiling. 

“ Yes,” said his father, gravely, “ exactly that! ” 

They started off at dawn. 

From the moment that they struck the old ele¬ 
phant’s spoor, Mbumbwe had not a word to say. 
Two freshly made scars, red and bleeding, one on 
either cheek, showed that the Matabele had made 


300 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

some kind of sacrifice to his native deities to ensure 
magical protection. 

He set a terribly swift pace, all the harder in that 
the path climbed steadily. Up along a little rivulet, 
bordered with papyrus reeds, the spoor ran faintly, 
up beyond the range of hyphsene palms, up and on 
through endless thickets of “wait-a-bit” thorn, up 
to the higher scrub. On either side of the path was 
unbroken tangle, but it was clear that, wherever 
the path might lead, it was well-travelled. 

Mbumbwe made fire that night, and cooked the 
simple camp meal, but he did not say one word. 
To every question, he nodded or shook his head. 
Not for worlds would he have spoken. Ghosts, he 
believed, have power over a man if he yields to 
speech! 

Did the Matabele sleep that night? Neither of 
the white hunters knew. 

Long before dawn, however, Mbumbwe seized the 
shoulder of The Hunter and wakened him sud¬ 
denly. It was still dark, pitch dark, but, in the dis¬ 
tance, far below them, from the forest that they 
had left behind them since shortly after midday, a 
Jungle-Cock crowed faintly. 

The hot, sweet tea was soon ready, with some 
slices of antelope meat. But Mbumbwe neither ate 


THE PLACE OF PEACE 301 

nor drank, and watched anxiously for the first 
glimmer of false dawn. 

At daybreak they were off. 

The scrub grew scantier and scantier. 

Of the great fruit-trees which elephants love, 
there were no more to be seen. The shade-trees, 
mimosas and acacias, had been left behind. The 
teak trees grew scarce. Lianas disappeared. The 
whole character of the vegetation began to change, 
to suggest a colder clime. 

Huge bare boulders cropped up, sharp and an¬ 
gular; the path grew stony. The little rivulet that 
they were following no longer gurgled musically 
between reed-fringed banks, but roared down rapids 
or splashed hurriedly over successive falls. 

The gorgeously colored birds of the jungle, the 
whydah-bird, the honey-bird, the sun-bird, the hal¬ 
cyon-bird and all their splendid kin, were no more 
to be seen. Eagles wheeled overhead, and kites 
screamed. 

Spoor, strictly speaking, there was none. From 
time to time, especially when the enclosing walls 
of rock made it necessary to cross the stream, the 
imprints of the aged elephant could be seen, irregu¬ 
lar and deeply rutted. But Mbumbwe held on 
steadily, ever silent, never tired, evidently eager to 


302 THE TUSK-HUNTERS 

keep his word as a warrior, equally evidently in 
terror-driven desire to go as fast and return as soon 
as possible. The air was crisper than in the jungle 
and made walking easier, else Spencer could never 
have kept up the unfaltering pace. 

The second night found them in a lofty valley. 
Crystalline rock formation stretched on every side. 
The scene, though gloomy, possessed a sombre 
majesty. 

The soil was scant, giving but little herbage for 
the mountain goats to browse, themselves hunted 
by a small species of light-colored leopard, shaggy 
of coat and half-starved. Upon that stony soil 
were to be seen none of the gorgeous-colored lizards 
of the jungle; here were nought but rock-toads and 
stone-lizards. Even the scorpions shunned the 
region. 

Why should an elephant toil up here? On what 
could he feed? 

Spencer and his father were wakened the next 
morning by the sunlight shining full in their eyes. 
It was late. 

The fire was not lit. 

One glance explained all: Mbumbwe was not 
there. 

There was no need to ask the reason; it was very 


THE PLACE OF PEACE 803 

plain. That dawning, the crow of the Jungle-Cock 
had not been heard. 

This, to Mbumbwe, was a sign that he was in 
Ghost-Land, and he was probably speeding for the 
friendly jungle as fast as his legs would carry 
him. 

There was no fear that the white hunters could 
miss the way, now. The little mountain stream 
ran down a steep valley bordered by high rocks on 
either side, rocks which no elephant could climb, 
certainly not the aged elephant whose ill-spaced 
footprints revealed his tottering feebleness. That 
whole day long, the hunters did not see a single 
sign that their quarry had been feeding. He had 
probably taken water from the stream, and that 
was all. 

They were just about to make camp, shortly be¬ 
fore sunset, when they first saw the grey bulk of 
the old elephant moving in the distance ahead of 
them. He was toiling slowly, painfully onward, 
his head swaying from side to side, as though he 
could scarcely hold it upright. The trunk hung 
low. 

Overhead, the vultures were wheeling eagerly. 

Though the great beast was nearly a mile away, 
there was something so tragic in his utter loneli- 


304 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


ness, there, high in the mountains, with not one of 
his own kind near him, that Spencer spoke in a 
whisper: 

“ Are we going on? ” 

“ Not now,” said his father. “ He will not go 
far. Let us camp. To-morrow we shall see.” 

They moved on again, at dawn. 

Three hours later, they came in sight of the aged 
elephant, once more. The wind was blowing up the 
valley directly from them, and, surely the tottering 
patriarch should have been warned of the near 
presence of his bitterest enemies. But old age, 
probably, had dulled his senses. His drooping 
trunk touched ground every few inches, in a vain 
search to find some softer places to put his worn 
and weary feet. ✓ 

The white hunters followed up steadily and came 
to within a hundred yards of him. 

Once, indeed, the great beast turned and looked 
behind him, feebly put up his trunk as though to 
try and smell, but dropped it heavily again, de¬ 
spairingly. 

The Hunter was right. Old age had robbed the 
outworn but still stately creature of his hearing; 
old age had stolen from him his chief protection— 
the sense of smell. 



African lion and lioness. 









THE PLACE OF PEACE 305 

It was pitiful, pitiful, to see the aged elephant, 
still a good ten feet high despite the shrinkage of 
his form, staggering forward. The great ears, tat¬ 
tered to ribbons at the edges, were curled upward 
at the tips, the surest sign of extreme old age. The 
body was mottled with patches of white, especially 
about the head. 

Close, close behind, walked Spencer and his 
father, unheard by him, unseen by him, unsmelt by 
him. They walked silently, slowly, accommodating 
their steps to the enfeebled stride of the once proud 
Lord of the Forest. Time after time he seemed 
about to fall, but some invincible purpose, some 
inner spirit, drove him on. 

Up and up he climbed, to the very crest of the 
divide. 

It was just noon. 

At the crest, the veteran of nearly two hundred 
years turned upon the path and looked back. He 
could not see, or but very dimly, that was clear; he 
could not smell, or his last moments would have 
been troubled and embittered by the odor he hated 
most; and yet, in some dim gesture of regret, he 
stretched out his trunk in the direction where the 
jungle lay, the jungle where all his life had been, 
the jungle of his memories. With his outstretched 


306 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


trunk he trumpeted, a cracked and broken note, & 
veritable cry of desolate farewell. 

Then he turned and began to descend. 

The slope was very abrupt. Twice the old master 
of the jungle fell to his knees, so helpless that Spen¬ 
cer almost felt as though he should go and try to 
help him up! Twice the boy thought that the great 
elephant, splendid still in his wreckage, could never 
rise. But he lurched up to his feet, none the less, 
his great limbs thin and trembling, and went on 
and on. 

The afternoon sun shone more warmly on this 
slope. 

And then, quite suddenly, the elephant stopped 
and stood. 

The path, which showed itself to have been worn 
deep into the rock by centuries of usage, turned 
sharply off to the right. 

Again the veteran looked back, for the last 
time. 

Then he deliberately turned into a rocky defile, 
a veritable gorge, his footsteps growing firmer. He 
was near the end. 

For nearly half a mile, this gorge wound on. 

At last, at a sudden turn, it opened into a long j 
and narrow valley, hemmed in by mountains on 


THE PLACE OF PEACE 307 

every side. And that valley was as white as though 
it were covered with unsullied snow. 

Spencer's father caught him by the arm. 

“Then it is true!" he exclaimed. “It is all 
true! ” 

“What?" said the boy. 

“Look! Look!" 

Spencer gazed, first in astonishment, and then, in 
awe. 

The whiteness of the ground was the whiteness 
of bleached bones. By hundreds, by thousands, by 
tens of thousands they lay there: the skeletons of 
generations of elephants that had come there in 
loneliness to die. 

The aged elephant held on his way, in feeble con¬ 
fidence. His goal was won. 

Quietly, he kneeled down amid the bones of his 
ancestors, remained kneeling a moment or two, 
then, with a deep sigh, lay over upon his side, his 
legs updrawn, his trunk outstretched upon the 
ground. 

Overhead, in great circles, the vultures whirled, 
nearer and ever nearer. 

The huge bulk quivered once or twice, the trunk 
moved convulsively, and all was still. 

The aged elephant was gathered to his fathers. 


808 


THE TUSK-HUNTERS 


The boy’s eyes blurred at the dignity and the 
majesty of this death, and some minutes passed 
before he felt the touch of his father’s hand. 

“ Come, Son,” he said, and The Hunter’s voice 
was faltering. “ We have seen what Man was not 
meant to see.” 

At the entrance to the defile, both turned and 
looked again at the valley with its strange white 
floor. Ivory there was in quantity enough to make 
them immeasurably rich for life, tusks of every size 
and splendor. 

“You—you won’t take that ivory, Father!” 
protested Spencer, quaveringly. 

“No, Heaven forbid! I had as soon despoil a 
human cemeterv! ” 

V 

“ And Mbumbwe? ” 

“ Will never ask a question about Ghost-Land! ” 

For some moments, both stood silently, then, 
turning slowly, The Hunter moved away. 

“ Come, Son, come,” he said. “ We will go back. 
We will leave the Place of Peace inviolate. Com¬ 
merce, and even Science, must give way here. Let 
the old jungle heroes rest, their sleep all undis¬ 
turbed. We can, at least, yield them Honor and 
Respect! ” 


THE END 


MUSEUM BOOKS 

By FRANCIS ROLT-WHEELER 

Illustrated from photographs, many of which are furnished 
by the American Museum of Natural History 
Large l2mo Cloth Decorated cover Price, $1.75 each 

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IN THE AIR 

By FRANCIS ROLT-WHEELER 

With Forty-two Illustrations from Unusual War Photo¬ 
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For sale by all booksellers or by the publishers 

Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co., Boston, Mass. 
























































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